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DISCOVERY OF AMERICA BY NORTHMEN 



ADDRESS 
at tije tttfteflmg 

OF 

THE STATUE OF LEIF ERIKSEN 



DISCOVERY OF AMERICA BY NORTHMEN 



ADDRESS 
at t&e (Hnfceiling 

OF 

THE STATUE OF LEIF ERIKSEN 

delivered in faneuil hall 
Oct. 29, 1887 

BY S 

EBEN NORTON HORSFORD 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

CF&e EtoeraKf JPrrss, CarattiStrt 
1888 



SEntbcvsitg JJksb: 
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge. 



V 



w 



PREFACE. 



' I ^HE address delivered in Faneuil Hall on the oc- 
casion of the Unveiling of the Statue to Leif 
Eriksen has been revised, and there have been added to 
it, in the interest of the reader, several maps and illus- 
trations that may help to fulfil the object I had in view, 
— a justification of the monument to Leif in Boston. 
The matter omitted at the delivery, for want of time, 
has found its place in these pages. I have attempted 
to present in the address the essential story of the dis- 
covery of America by the Northmen, omitting only the 
matters which properly enough may appear in an ac- 
count of the life and usages of the people, but which 
do not so immediately concern the strict history of the 
Discovery of America. 

In the Appendix I have printed some notes : and, 
that the reader might have the principal sources of the 
Saga lore before him, I have added the larger part of 
Joshua Toulmain Smith's version (1842) of the Saga 
of Eirek the Red, with occasional parallel passages from 
Beamish's translation, and extracts from Thorfinn's Saga, 
and also the three "pieces" (Thattir) interpolated into 



VI 

the life of Olaf Tryggvason, which are embraced in the 
paper of J. Eliot Cabot. 

A subsequent paper will discuss the Landfall of the 
Northmen, and the site of the houses built by Leif and 
occupied by him, Thorwald, and Thorfinn, and where, 
after additions by Thorfinn, the son Snorri was born. 

I find no evidence of there having been any build- 
ings erected by the early Northmen on the south side 
of the peninsula of Cape Cod, or on the shores of Nar- 
ragansett Bay. 

E. N. H. 

Cambridge, March i, 1888. 



CONTENTS. 



PACE 

Address 9 

Appendix A. — Dighton Rock 65 

" B. — Latitude of Vinland 65 

" C. — Andr£ Thevet 81 

" D. — Wood's Holl 83 

" E. — Indian Corn found growing in Vinland . . 84 

Saga of Eirek the Red 89 

Saga of Thorfinn 97 

ThAttir .Eirek's Rauda and Graenlendinga ThAtt. Cabot 105 



ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS. 



KUustrattons. 



PAGE 



Statue of Leif Eriksen . . Frontispiece 

Runic Inscriptions on Stone in the Island of Kingiktorsoak i i 

Ruins of a Church at Gardar 12 

Dighton Rock, Massachusetts 24 

Millsboro Rock, Pennsylvania 25 

Mill at Chesterton, England ,26 

Tower at Newport 26 

Finn Magnusen's Chart 67 

Fac-simile of a Page from the Saga of Eirek the Red: 
Codex Flateyensis 80 



The North Atlantic 9 

Fog belt (Hydrographical Bureau) . 31 

Bass Harbor, Mount Desert 32 ■- 

The North Atlantic, 1570, by Sigurd Stephanius .... 37 

Ruysch's Map, 1507 39 

Map of Hieronymus Verrazano, 1529 (Rev. Dr. De Costa) . 40 v 

" " Michael Lok, 1582 46 v 

Meriam's Map 47 •- 

Map of Verrazano (Maiollo) 48 - 

Nolin's Map 51 

Rare Map in Possession of S. L. M. Barlow 54 

Behaim's Map, with Additions, 1492 60 - 

Leuthner's Map of Labrador 69 - 

Henderson's Map of Iceland 75 

Montanus's Map, 1671 83 J 




gSjlr. VifP }f"' 

S 4/7/ »»»•",<. ; « ,>K* y 




W 1 



LEIF ERIKSEN. 



i. 

r HAT is there to justify a monument to Leif 
Eriksen in Boston ? 
It may be said in reply at the outset, that it is obvious 
that if Leif, eight hundred and eighty-seven years ago, 
landed on the continent of America anywhere southwest 
of Greenland, a monument to his memory might properly 
be set up wherever it would be seen and appreciated. 
The special fitness of a memorial in Boston may become 
equally obvious. 

In the service with which I have been intrusted, 
I desire to place before you, as far as I may, the prin- 
cipal considerations upon which a sound judgment may 
be based. To sustain me in this, I solicit your co- 
operation. You will add not a little to the chances of 
my making the discussion of the subject worthy of your 
attention, if you will be kind enough to hold before 
your mind's eye, now for a moment, any familiar map 
of North America. Look at the east coast. From 
Greenland, along the line to the southwest, you will 
notice three projections into the sea. They are New- 
foundland, Nova Scotia, and Cape Cod. Newfoundland 



10 



is bold, rocky, mountainous, of meagre vegetation, and 
with few beaches. The other two, Nova Scotia and 
Cape Cod, are without mountains, wooded, and skirted 
by extended white-sand beaches. The first may thus 
be easily distinguished by the navigator from the other 
two. Look at their relative distances apart. They are 
about as two to three to six; that is, if you could sail 
with a fair wind from Cape Cod to Nova Scotia in two 
days, it would take about three days, with the same 
wind, to go on to the southern headlands of Newfound- 
land ; and, having coursed along Newfoundland to Belle 
Isle, it would take you six days more to reach Green- 
land. A more violent wind on the last section might 
reduce the time to four days. Remember the three 
points, — Newfoundland and Nova Scotia and Cape 
Cod. 

There are, as we all know, Danish people now living 
in Greenland; Arctic explorers and whalers share their 
hospitality. Authentic history tells us of extensive set- 
tlements of Scandinavians who went there from Iceland 
as early as the tenth century, — indeed Greenland would 
appear to have been discovered toward the close of the 
ninth century, — and that by about the middle of the 
fourteenth century the plague and war had quite blotted 
them out. The Danes now living there are of more 
recent times. They entered upon the abandoned settle- 
ments of the earlier colonists. 

As evidence that Northmen long ago occupied Green- 
land, there is, on an island not far from and to the north 
of Disco on the west coast of Greenland, in latitude 



73°. — you may see it to-day, — a mass of rock covered 
with inscriptions in characters which belong to these 
people of the North. These inscriptions have been 




Runic Inscriptions on Stone in the Island of Kingiktorsoak. 

deciphered. Their date is 1135. Numerous similar 
columns, with like inscriptions, are found in Norway and 
Sweden. Research has proved them all to be of com- 
mon origin. 

At Gardar, on one of the bays of southern Green- 
land, there are yet standing the walls of a massive stone 
church, which, in common with the entire Greenland 
coast, has sunk to a lower level (in keeping, as the 
geologists tell us, with the rise of the coast of Norway), 
until its foundations are now below the level of the sea. 
There are remains of other churches, and also inscrip- 
tions both in Runic and Latin. At one time there were 
not less than two hundred and eighty distinct settlements 
in southern Greenland. 

Of the bishop who first ruled in church matters over 
the people worshipping in these ancient edifices, we have 
authentic records in the Catholic Church. Not only 



of him, Bishop Upsi, who was sent out to Greenland 
and also to Vinland in 1121, but of at least eighteen 
other bishops are there records preserved in the Ice- 
landic Church Annals. Bishop Eric Upsi heads the 
list. The Bishopric of Gardar was occupied from 1 1 2 1 
to 1537. This is a clear and distinct recognition of set- 
tlements in Vinland, the portion of America where the 




Ruins of a Church at Gardar. 

Northmen claim to have made their earliest settlements, 
in the beginning of the eleventh century. 

The Icelandic records that make certain mention of 
Bishop Upsi are of three classes, as Rafn, the Danish 
writer, informs us. There are the Annals of the Kings, 
which refer to the parent country; there are the 
Church Icelandic Annals ; and lastly, the Annals of the 
Lcegmen, or governors of Iceland. They all refer to 
Bishop Eric Upsi, sometimes to him as Bishop Eric. 
The Catholic Church records mention him as the 
earliest of American bishops. The records tell us 
further that the tribute to the Pope from the colonies 
over which these bishops presided, besides the Peter's 



13 

Pence, amounted to twenty-six hundred pounds of wal- 
rus-teeth annually. They gave of what they had. Who 
may estimate the shrines and images to which this 
Arctic ivory contributed ? 

These Icelandic records are a part of a vast body 
of literature, of which Professor Fiske, late of Cornell 
University, the first of American Icelandic scholars, 
says : " All the literature of this period in all the other 
Teutonic dialects of Europe [and he includes the Old 
High German] is but a drop to a bucket of water com- 
pared with that of Iceland." If you would form some 
idea of how much of it one man may become acquainted 
with, in the treatment of one theme only, look at the 
table of manuscripts and books which Paul Riant con- 
sulted in the preparation of his " Expeditions and Pil- 
grimages of the Scandinavians at the time of the 
Crusades." The titles alone of the works cited cover 
fifty royal octavo pages. 

Why should you confide in these records? This is 
a legitimate inquiry. I will try to answer it. 



II. 



In the rise of men from barbarism, the step that 
may be regarded as one of the most significant is that 
which gives them pride in personal achievement. Out 
of this pride come the story-tellers, the bards, the min- 
strels. Out of this come pride of family, pride in 
ancestry, and much besides of factors in civilization. 



J 4 

The man of ready and retentive memory, the nar- 
rator, if a man of character, comes to be trusted with 
family records, genealogies, titles to lands, and the his- 
tory of important events. He is the custodian of the 
laws and precedents of his times, as well as the friend 
and counsellor of kings and the chronicler of dynasties 
and of wars. In the progress of civilization, this man 
of memory precedes the writer of history. 

This professional chronicler may be traced back to 
Bible times ; but you may see the mode of his training 
and witness his accomplishment to-day. The Zuiii In- 
dians in New Mexico, studied so carefully, so long, and 
with such measureless self-sacrifice by Mr. Cushing, have 
a priesthood set apart for this particular purpose. I have 
heard members of this priesthood, on several occasions, 
recite stories made as settings to moral precepts or to 
phenomena in natural history. I have heard a given 
story three times repeated, — as it seemed to me, and 
as Mr. Cushing assured me it was, — absolutely without 
variation. Of one relation to which I listened, and 
which with its concurrent translation lasted nearly three 
hours, Mr. Cushing said that he had heard it several 
times before, on public or festive occasions, and that 
there had not been the variation of a word. Mr. Cush- 
ing has heard a story, of much length and at different 
times, by two relators, and without concert; and their 
performances were like an utterance and its echo. 

Now, these persons are so carefully trained to repeat 
what they hear, and from an age so early, that a boy 
of twelve years may be sent as a spy to a distant 



15 

tribe, to listen for days to the conversations going on 
about him, and to bring home, word for word, what he 
has heard. The accomplishment of such persons in 
this direction becomes very great. It seems almost 
marvellous, but we have well-known examples of it. 
Beaconsfield was once upbraided for using the memorial 
address of another, which, having read, he retained in his 
memory without effort, and later reproduced it, oblivious 
of its having been first pronounced by some one else. 
The story of Walter Scott's recalling to the Ettrick 
Shepherd a poem read only once, and many years be- 
fore, is a familiar case of this word-memory. There 
are persons who, hearing read but once a written or 
a printed page, retain and can later recite it word for 
word. Indeed, many pages are sometimes so retained 
and recited. It is not inconceivable, therefore, that the 
story-tellers, the Saga-men, set apart for this purpose, be- 
came highly accomplished. The astonishing feature is 
the accuracy to which they attained. For this they 
were consecrated. I noticed that the old Zuni priest 
to whom I listened, spent much of his time in prayer. 
While he and his companions were last year sharing 
the bounty of Mrs. Hemenway, at Manchester-by-the-Sea, 
that Mr. Cushing might take down and preserve the 
literature which they possessed, three times every day 
these devout men went to the sea-shore to pray. 

The successive priests are the heirs, word for word, 
to the acquisitions and relations of their predecessors. 

Such men held the literature of Scandinavia, — the 
family histories, the romances, the songs, the annals, the 



i6 

voyages of discovery, the wars, the conquests ; and as Mr. 
Cushing took down the relations of the Zuhi priests, so 
the early bishops and governors took down in Icelandic 
the relations of the Skalds and the Saga-men of Iceland. 

The relations of these men were in the vernacular ; 
and you may see that, pronounced in the presence of the 
kings and the people, had they been otherwise than true 
they would have been fulsome and offensive, — " mockery, 
and not praise," as Snorro Sturleson sa)'S. 

Such writing, like the writing of scientific or literary 
men of to-day, may carry internal evidence of its trust- 
worthiness. 

We are accustomed to refer to the internal evidence 
of the truthfulness of certain precious books familiar to 
us all. Mr. Henry Mitchell, of the Coast Survey, says in 
a manuscript, which I have been permitted to read and 
to cite : " In overhauling these Icelandic narratives, I am 
impressed with their simple, matter-of-fact style, which 
indicates that all the merit of the composition was ex- 
pected to lie in the truth of the statements. They do 
not sound like sailors' yarns, but often like extracts from 
a ship's log." 

These Sagas gave the story which has brought us 
together to-day. 

The essential thing for which our Scandinavian kins- 
men, the citizens of the West, as well as of New England, 
have given their effort, and for which Miss Whitney's 
beautiful statue has been conceived and wrought and set 
up, is to commemorate the discovery of the continent 
of America by the Northmen, in the year iooo. 



17 

The question may be asked if this be a reality. It 
rests in part on the trustworthiness of the Sagas, and in 
part on other evidence which will be presented to you. 

Let me give, in a few words, what has been said by 
men whose names are familiar to us all. 

Baron Nordenskjold, of Stockholm, a man still in 
active life, who sailed, as we all remember, from the North 
Cape through the Arctic Ocean and Behring's Straits 
into the Northern Pacific, says, in a recent letter : " Of 
so much are we fully assured, — that the principal facts 
stated in the simple narrative of the Sagas can be en- 
tirely relied upon. The Northmen made numerous long 
voyages out from Greenland for centuries [the historical 
records give a period of over three hundred years], and 
established colonies on the American continent." 

The late Mr. Henry Wheaton, the writer on Inter- 
national Law, for twelve years our charge d'affaires at the 
Court of Denmark, where his time was largely devoted 
to the study of Icelandic literature and the society of the 
learned men of the Danish capital, and where he wrote 
" The History of the Northmen," accepted the accounts 
of the discovery of the American continent and its colo- 
nization by Scandinavians, as established history. 

Mr. Wheaton was afterwards for eleven years our 
Minister at Berlin, the companion and friend of Hum- 
boldt. This great critic of geographical history, Alex- 
ander von Humboldt, accepted the conclusion that the 
Northmen discovered and colonized portions of the Amer- 
ican continent southwest of Greenland. He defined Vin- 
land as the region between Boston and New York. 



The native Icelander Magnussen, Professor of Ice- 
landic literature in Cambridge, England, says, in a recent 
letter which I am permitted to quote : " There is no 
learned body in Europe that even breathes a doubt about 
the question of the settlement of Vinland by Northmen." 

I have been reminded by one more familiar than I am 
with the literature of this subject, and to whom the lan- 
guage is a second nature, — I do not need in this presence 
to mention the name of the lady whose efforts underlie 
the great features of this occasion, — I have, I say, been 
reminded that I might quote upon this point among great 
living authorities, the Icelandic Professor Vigfusson, at 
Oxford, and Konrad Maurer, of Germany, and Paul 
Riant, of France. I have not read these authors, but I 
have had opportunity to see some of their works, and 
I know something of their repute. I have read enough 
of what they have said on this subject, however, to find 
the history of Vinland accepted by them as that of any 
other country settled nine centuries ago. They do not 
regard the theme as calling for discussion. 

Two names more I will give you. Our own J. Elliot 
Cabot says, in substance, that no scholar qualified to 
give a critical judgment on the historical value of the 
Icelandic Sagas has placed himself on record as doubt- 
ing their trustworthiness ; and of this conviction was 
Edward Everett. 



19 



III. 

Now, what is the great fact that is sustained by such 
an array of authority ? It is this : that somewhere to the 
southwest of Greenland, distant at least a fortnight's sail, 
there were, for three hundred years after the beginning 
of the eleventh century, Norse colonies on the coast of 
the continent of America, with which colonies the home 
country maintained commercial intercourse. The country 
to which the merchant vessels sailed was called Vinland. 
This is the fact of first rank. 

The fact next in importance is that the first of the 
Northmen to set foot on the shores of Vinland was Leif 
Eriksen. The story is a very simple one. 

Let me outline the relation of the Sagas. Leif Erik- 
sen, guided by the story of a merchantman, who many 
years before had been blown off his course in a storm and 
seen land, sailed southwestward from Greenland in the year 
iooo. He touched at two points which he had expected 
to find, and gave them names ; and after some three weeks 
or more came to a prominent cape, as he had been told 
he would. Somewhere to the northwest of this point, and 
not far, he built houses and passed a winter, and called 
the region Vinland. He did not go beyond the cape. 
He was succeeded by Thorwald, Leif's brother. He 
came in Leif's ships in 1002 to Leif's headquarters, and 
passed the winter. The summer following was passed 
in explorations. In the second spring Thorwald manned 
his ship and sailed eastward from Leif's house ; and un- 



20 

luckily blown against a neck of land, broke the stem of 
the ship. He grounded his ship in high water at a place 
where the tide receded with the ebb to a great distance, 
and permitted the men to careen her, and in the intervals 
of the tides to repair her. When he was ready to sail 
again, the old stem, or nose, of the ship, with a part of 
the keel, was set up in the sand. Thorwald's party re- 
mained three years in the neighboring region, examining 
sandy shores and islands to the north of the point on or 
near which he had set up his ship's nose. In a battle 
with the Indians he was wounded and died, and was 
buried in Vinland, and in the spring following his crew 
returned to Greenland. 

A few years later, Thorfinn, and his wife Gudrid, 
after their wedding at Leif's paternal mansion, Brattahlid, 
set out with a fleet of three ships and one hundred and 
sixty persons, of whom seven were women, to go to Vin- 
land. They sailed with a northeast wind past Helluland 
and Markland, already observed and named by Leif, and 
two days' sail beyond, when they came to the ship's nose 
set up on the shore. Keeping that on the starboard, 
they sailed along sandy shores, which, for a reason in- 
telligible through the researches of Professor Mitchell, 
they called " Wunderstrand " and also " Furdustrand." * 
About the southern extremity they encountered strong 
currents, so violent that they gave to the Sound in which 
they occurred the name of " Straum-Fiord " (sound of 
violent currents). Thorhall, one of Thorfinn's captains, 
ill of the hard fare, disappointed and dissatisfied, turned 

1 It seems possible that this part of the Saga refers to a later exploration. 



his vessel to the north to explore Vinland, and was blown 
off at Kjalarnes. Thorfinn sailed to find him, but with- 
out success. After establishing himself at Leif's houses, 
he passed repeatedly around the keel cape and along 
the shore to Straumfjord and back, and at the end of 
three years returned, with his wife Gudrid, to Green- 
land, and thence to Norway and Iceland. 

I may not fail to mention that this Gudrid was the 
lady who, after the death of her husband, made a pious 
pilgrimage to Rome, where she was received with much 
distinction, and where she told the Pope of the beautiful 
new country in the far West, of " Vinland the Good," 
and about the Christian settlements made there by 
Scandinavians. 

Nor may I forget to mention that her son Snorri, 
born in America, at the site of Leif's houses, — and per- 
haps it may some day be possible to indicate the neigh- 
borhood of his birthplace with greater precision, — has 
been claimed to be the ancestor of Thorwaldsen, the 
Danish sculptor. 

IV. 

I had the pleasure, in the summer of 1880, of an inter- 
view with Dr. Worsaae, Professor of Northern Archaeology 
in the University, and Director of the Museum of North- 
ern Antiquities at Copenhagen, — the author of the 
terms, with which science is familiar, the Stone Age, 
the Bronze Age, and the Iron Age. 

I had just come from examining a Viking ship of the 
tenth or eleventh century, I think, or earlier perhaps, but 



recently exhumed from a mound at Gokstad in southern 
Norway, — a vessel at least sixty feet long, and more than 
twelve feet wide, a lapstreak of split oak, — not sawn or 
hewn, but in long strips like basket strips, perhaps an 
inch in thickness, — with a keel a foot wide, and a huge 
step for the mast, near the middle from end to end. 
Professor Rygh, the custodian of the Museum of the 
University at Christiania, assured me that such a step 
could not now be found in all the forests of Norway, not 
even in those of the Varanger Fiord, still famed for its 
splendid trees. It was fashioned from a section of the 
trunk of an oak some five feet in diameter, and served 
also, Professor Rygh remarked, the purpose of ballast. 
There were two sets of ribs — a false and a true set — 
of most ingenious contrivance, which gave a measure 
of flexibility to the walls of the hull. All the wood 
was of a dull, deep brown. Professor Rygh gave me a 
piece of the oakum with which the vessel had been 
caulked. It still exhaled the odor of tar. I felt, as I 
gazed upon this Viking's pride, that I might be in the 
presence of a ship that had exchanged signals with the 
vessel in which Leif rounded the sandspit of Cape Cod 
into the harbor of Provincetown, almost nine centuries 
before. Our conversation naturally turned on Vinland, 
and I mentioned one or two facts in regard to names of 
the Massachusetts coast, which had not before claimed 
his attention, and the significance of which he recog- 
nized. " But," said he, " what need have you of more ? 
There was Adam of Bremen. The King told him he 
had subjects in Vinland." 



23 

This is what Adam, from Bremen, who, in 1073, almost 
half a century before Bishop Upsi, wrote a work on the 
propagation of the Christian religion in the north of 
Europe, said in a brief passage at the end of his book : 
" Besides these, he (King Svend) mentioned another 
region which had been visited by many, lying in that 
ocean, which is called Winland, because vines grew there 
spontaneously, producing very good wine ; grain likewise 
springs up there without sowing. This we learn, not 
from fabulous reports, but from the accurate accounts of 
the Danes." 

This, you see, was on information from the Bureau 
of Navigation furnished to the King. I had not 
appreciated its importance before my interview with 
Dr. Worsaae. Such testimony is to most minds beyond 
the reach of distrust. 



V. 

To the story of the Sagas there have in recent 
times been added others, which have nothing to do with 
the ancient relations, — the story of the Dighton Rock, 
and the story of the Stone Tower. They were the 
joint fruit of our own early historians and the writers 
of the Northern Society of Antiquaries of Copenhagen. 
Do not let us be too zealous in pronouncing judgment 
against those who related and believed them. These 
writers, for the most part, have long since acknowledged 
the misinterpretation of facts into which they had been 
led. 



2 4 

The fascinated antiquary, who is the first to enter 
a new field of research, is in danger of attaching un- 
merited significance to lesser points. His horizon has 
temporarily been narrowed, of course ; else he had not 
been the first to get a glimpse of before unseen truths. 
This very consideration is sometimes the occasion of 
leading others into too ready belief. But time, in the 
main, restores things to their relative importance. 

It is pleasant to add here that Torfaeus, the Icelandic 
writer, whose work published in 1705 first drew attention 
to the story of Vinland, is to this day the highest au- 
thority upon these Sagas ; and he expressed no doubt 
as to their trustworthiness. 

I may say a word of the two unhappy claims ; there 
are others of less moment, but I will not dwell on them. 



DIGHTON ROCK. 

There is a boulder — I have seen it — on the shore 
of Taunton River, against the little village of Dighton, 
on which is an elaborate inscription that has been 




Dighton Rock, Massachusetts. 



25 

repeatedly copied, and which was thought by the early 
antiquaries to resemble inscriptions of a Norse char- 
acter. It has also been claimed to be of other and still 
more ancient origin. The discovery of numerous other 
similar inscriptions of palpable Indian origin — some of 




Millsboro Rock, Pennsylvania. 

which I have seen in Arizona, and many more which have 
been collected and published by the late Mr. Schoolcraft, 
and more recently, at great length, by Major Powell, the 
head of the Ethnological Bureau — has led to the re- 



26 



jection of the view first entertained. On comparing the 
inscription with one from Major Powell's recent volume, 
one sees at a glance why the markings on the Dighton 
rock have come to be regarded as the work of Indians. 



THE NEWPORT TOWER. 

There is the Stone Tower of Newport, which was 
thought to be of Norse construction. It had the stone 
columns and circular arches conceived to be character- 





Mill at Chesterton, England. Tower at Newport. 

istic of Norse architecture, and recalling certain stone 
windmills of England, as Dr. Palfrey has pointed out. 
It recalls also the massive shafts and arches of the 
Norman Chapel in the White Tower, of London, and 
the columns in the grand old Norwegian churches at 



2 7 

Stavanger and at Trondheim. Mention of it, however, 
has been found in the will of Mr. Arnold, a well-known 
early resident of Newport, who owned the lands about 
the Tower, and who speaks of it as " my stone-built 
windmill." The date of its construction was preserved 
in the diary of a contemporary citizen. An earlier, 
and the first one, built in 1663, was blown down. It 
was rebuilt, and of stone, in 1675. Nothing can be 
more conclusive than Dr. Palfrey's argument. The mill 
at Chesterton was visited by him and this cut procured. 
Its resemblance to the old Stone Tower is too striking 
to call for comment. 

THE LATITUDE. 

Exception has been taken to the assumed latitude of 
Vinland. It is mentioned in the Sagas' account of Leif, 
whose observations were continued for a single winter 
only, that the shortest day of the year in Vinland was 
of a length which would help to fix the latitude of the 
place of observation. It may have been between 41 and 
43 , — about the latitude of Massachusetts Bay. This 
was the latitude answering to one mode of computation. 
According to another, the point of observation may 
have been about 49 , or in the region of the mouth of 
the St. Lawrence. There are other estimates, resting 
on other reasonings, which greatly increase the contrast. 1 
It is impossible here and now to adequately present the 
various views that have been entertained. 

1 See Appendix. 



28 



VI. 



I might dwell at some length, if time would permit, 
upon other interesting features of the relations of the 
Sagas. 

i . For example, one of very great significance is that 
of the extraordinary height of the tide at high water, and 
the great area of gently-sloping surface laid bare at ebb 
tide, which enabled Thorwald to renew his broken keel. 
There are few places, Professor Mitchell says, where it 
is possible to careen and repair between the tides a 
ship drawing ten feet of water, as vessels of the kind 
able to cross the Atlantic probably did. In the bottom 
of Massachusetts Bay, as you know, the tides rise from 
ten to twelve feet, while south of Cape Cod peninsula 
they rise but from three to five feet. 

2. There are extraordinary currents found only against 
Nantucket, to which the Norsemen referred, and which 
it has been Mr. Mitchell's duty, as an officer of the Coast 
Survey, to study, and his privilege to identify. He says : 
" The two great tidal oscillations of the Atlantic form 
their node at or very near 70° W. L., which intersects 
the shore of Nantucket Island. There the oscillation 
ceases to be vertical, and the movement becomes almost 
horizontal, precisely as at the node of a musical string. 
The party [of Leif] were not at the southward of Cape 
Cod Bay. By similar reasoning upon the tidal node it 
may be shown that they [Leif's] men were nowhere to the 
northeastward of Cape Sable." Mr. Mitchell is the first 



2 9 

man of scientific habit to recognize the great significance 
of the notes in the Sagas upon the tides and currents. 

3. There is the long, slightly-curved outline of Cape 
Cod between the Race, or north end, and the southern 
extremity of Nauset Beach, to which the Northmen, as 
already mentioned, applied the terms " Wunderstrand " 
and " Furdustrand." 

Mr. Mitchell says : " The sandy shore along which 
they passed they called ' Wunderstrand,' because, as the 
Saga says, it was ' so long getting round it.' The expla- 
nation of this is very simple. The coast was a great 
curve, the line of sight was tangent to that curve, and 
there seemed to be a point a short distance ahead, which 
receded as they advanced. This chasing after a vanish- 
ing point is quite a common experience along sandy 
shores when a vessel is seeking a shelter. There are 
several places on our coast called ' Point-no-Point,' which 
are simply great sweeps of the shore, — trying to the 
patience, as I know from experience. In the Passaic 
River below Newark there are four places known as 
* Point Look-out,' ' Point-no-Point,' ' Point Look-in,' and 
' Point Agin.' The illusion at Cape Cod is perfect, and 
it is really a ' Wonder Strand.' " 

4. It is recorded that the Skraelings — the Indians en- 
countered by Thorwald and Thorfinn — had canoes made 
of skins ; and it is said that while such boats are to be 
found in the possession of the Eskimos at this day, they 
are not found as far south as Cape Cod. To this it has 
been replied that the Eskimos may have come to Mass- 
achusetts Bay in their wars, as the Iroquois did at a 



3Q 

later period, as remarked by Champlain, and that they 
might have brought their boats of skin with them. It 
is further said that the Icelandic word for "skin" may 
apply to the bark of trees, as well as to the integuments 
of animals, and that birch-bark canoes may well have 
been encountered in Massachusetts Bay. Champlain 
found them here in 1605. 

5. Of the grapes which the German Tyrker, who was 
of Leifs crew, discovered, and of which, as a native of a 
wine country, weary of his ship's rations, he doubtless 
over-ate, there were then, as now, a plenty on the 
shores of Massachusetts Bay and along the St. Lawrence. 
Jacques Cartier speaks of them as early as 1535. Cham- 
plain found them in great profusion and excellence about 
the mouth of the Chouacoit, on an island which he called 
" Bacchus Island " in his narrative, though it does not 
appear on any of his maps that I can remember. They 
are now gathered in quantities every year along our 
own coast. 

6. The incidental literature of the story of the North- 
men has been enriched by an idyl, which we all know 
so well, — an idyl so sweet and so ringing that it were 
a pity to invade its realm. " The Skeleton in Armor " 
was unhappily burned with the town-hall to which it had 
been consigned for safe keeping. But the verse which has 
given us the ideal hero and the picture of his race and his 
times is beyond the reach of conflagration. It may per- 
haps be permitted me to say that I once analyzed a piece 
of one of the metallic ornaments gathered up with the 
figure it had served to encase, and compared it as a whole 



/ 

-oAu&.i!5 



£ST>.Lili an 
; Oct 4 



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'errotta 

21 



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June. 28 



Aug. IK 
April 29 



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"a*** Sep* 24 



3i 

with a similar decoration found by a personal friend, not 
far from the grave of an Indian chief known to have 
been buried within less than two hundred years, at the 
east end of Long Island, New York. Both pieces of 
metal were of modern date, and both were not improb- 
ably of the native copper of Lake Superior, with slight 
traces only of impurity. 

But on these, and all other minor details, it will be 
impossible to dwell. 

VII. 

Let me briefly present anew the story of the discov- 
ery of Vinland. It is the imperfection perhaps of my 
method of treating the relations of the Sagas that makes 
it impossible to give all the incidents in strict sequence. 
It will be a repetition in part, but with a new purpose. 
Please revive to your eye the outline of our coast on the 
map. Call up the three projections into the sea: New- 
foundland, Nova Scotia, and Cape Cod. 

In 985 a voyager from Iceland to Greenland, Bjarni, a 
merchant as well as ship-master, had been driven from 
his course by a violent northeast storm, accompanied 
by thick fogs, which, " continuing for many days," carried 
him into unknown seas. 

The southern coast of Iceland is about in latitude 
63 30'. Bjarni had sailed for three days on his course 
toward Greenland when the northeasterly storm arose, of 
such great violence, driving him before it " for many 



32 

days." Precisely how many days the storm lasted we 
are left to conjecture; but we are not left wholly in 
doubt as to the minimum of time, or how far he may have 
been driven. Captain John Rut, an English navigator 
and discoverer, commanding the " Mary of Guilford," in 
1527, was driven in a frightful northeast storm from 
the latitude of 53° for some twenty days. In his letter 
to Henry VIII. (Purchas, vol. iii., p. 809) he refers to 
the violence of the storm, which carried down a com- 
panion ship, the " Sampson," and brought him at length 
to the neighborhood of Cape de Bas (Low Cape) and 
enabled him to find shelter in the Cape de Bas harbor, — 
easily identified as Bass Harbor Head and Bass Harbor, 
on the southeast coast of Mt. Desert. He had been 
swept through nearly ten degrees of latitude, and pos- 
sibly more in longitude. His letter was written from 
St. John's (See Lok's map, 1582), the modern Gloucester 
Harbor, twenty-five leagues south of Cape de Bas Harbor, 
then, as now, the resort of fleets of fishing- vessels. The 
accompanying sketch, which gives the region of the great 
fog-belt, is from the Hydrographical Bureau at Washing- 
ton, for which I am indebted to Capt. John R. Bartlett, 
and will illustrate the field in which both Bjarni and 
John Rut were swept beyond their control. 

When the sun at last appeared, Bjarni found himself 
off a low, wooded shore destitute of mountains, but having 
rising ground in many parts, — the first European to see 
the land at the southwest of Greenland. This description 
applies to a long stretch of coast on the outside of the 
peninsula on the south and east of Massachusetts Bay. 







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33 

The coast did not resemble the coast of Greenland, 
which was mountainous, and white with glaciers. He did 
not land. Deciding that the country he sought was to 
the north, and turning his prow from the shore, he sailed, 
with a favoring wind, for two days, when he found him- 
self again near a land low, level, and overgrown with 
wood. It did not look like Greenland. He turned away 
a second time and sailed for three days more, still with a 
favoring wind, when he found himself opposite a high, 
bold shore, rocky and covered with snow. He proceeded, 
with the land always in sight, till he recognized that he 
was coasting an island. He turned again away, and after 
four days of wind from the south, so violent that he was 
obliged to shorten sail, he found himself at the southern 
extremity of Greenland. He had not touched shore since 
he left Iceland. He had been not less than fourteen 
days sailing to the northward. He told his story, and 
was upbraided that he had not landed. 

A few years (fourteen) later Bjarni sold his ship to 
Leif Eriksen, to whom the adventure had been related, 
and who gathered a crew, not improbably, it has been 
suggested, including some who had already sailed the 
ship under Bjarni. With this ship Leif reversed Bjarni's 
course, virtually with the ship's log, to find the most 
distant land Bjarni had seen. He sailed with a north- 
erly wind, past the snow-covered mountains, which he 
called "Helluland" (slate-rock land, — land of stratified 
rocks), 1 came upon the low wooded land of white sandy 
shore, which he called " Markland " (a land suitable for 

1 These are the phrases of a well educated Norwegian sailor. 



34 

settlement and farming), and then, still without stopping, 
and with the same favoring wind for two days, arrived 
at another promontory, — a region of low sandhills, near 
which he came to anchor. He did not pass this point. 
He thought it an island, as Gosnold did in 1602 and 
De Monts (Champlain) in 1605. This island was the 
" In. Baccalauras " of the Portuguese on Ruysch's map, 
1 507. Leif turned to the right, and sought a place where 
he set up dwelling-houses. He passed the winter, and 
returned in the spring to Greenland. 

This is the story of the landfall of Leif. He had 
been some fortnight's sail, at least, distant to the south- 
west. He came, so we conceive, upon the northern 
extremity of Cape Cod, and set up his dwellings some- 
where on an indentation of the shore of Massachusetts 
Bay, the site of which may yet be indicated. 

It was his brother Thorwald, who, following him two 
years later, stopped at Leif's houses and passed the 
winter. The next summer was passed in expeditions 
along the neighboring coast. 

Sailing eastward in the spring, after his second winter, 
he was driven on a neck of land in bad weather, broke 
the keel of his ship, grounded his vessel at high water, 
careened her, and stopped a long time to renew the keel 
on a shore where the water retreated a great way seaward 
at ebb tide, giving him time to work when the tide was 
out. When he had repaired his ship he set up the old 
part, which had been removed, in the sand, and said : 
" We will set up the old keel on the naes, and call it 



35 

Kjalarnaes," which he did. He passed two winters in 
Leifs houses, was wounded in a fight with Indians, and 
dying of his wounds, was buried in Vinland. After 
another winter his crew returned to Greenland. 

The route was now blazoned throughout. 

Thorfinn, succeeding Thorwald a few years later, run- 
ning past Helluland and Markland ; and from the first of 
the low, wooded promontories or the islands near it, as 
Leif did, and as Bjarni before him had done in the op- 
posite direction, in two days came upon a cape and the 
ship's keel which Thorwald had set up, and called the cape 
" Kjalarnaes." Is there a link wanting ? Let us see. 

Bjarni had made a forced reconnaissance, ending in 
Greenland ; had caught glimpses of a succession of head- 
lands along a northeasterly course, had observed their 
more characteristic appearances, and noted their relative 
distances apart; had told his story to Leif, and sold 
him his ship. Leif made a leisurely reconnaissance in 
verification, and picketed the route with descriptive 
names. Thorwald found the course so familiar to his 
crew that he proceeded directly to his brother's house, 
and later set up a monument at the southern limit of 
his voyage. Thorfinn found the monument (the old 
keel) set up by Thorwald, as he expected to, and turned 
soon after to take possession of Leifs houses. 1 

Or the summary may be stated in another way: 
Bjarni 's voyage was reversed by Leif with the aid of 
Bjarni's log. The time of sailing through the southern 
section from Cape Sable to Cape Cod was two days by 

1 The Sagas vary ; compare J. Eliot Cabot with Beamish. 



36 

Bjarni ; two days by Leif ; and two days by Thorfinn. 
Leif was succeeded in the occupation of his houses by 
Thorwald and Thorfinn. Thorwald and Thorfinn were 
both at the old keel, and the keel-shaped cape. The 
chain is complete. 

VIII. 

I now present to you a map preserved by Torfaeus, in 
which Greenland and the three projections into the sea 
to which I called your attention are given. On it are 
Herjulfsnaes, the cape on or near which Bjarni's father 
lived, the modern Cape Farewell. To the east is Iceland, 
from which Bjarni's father and Leif's father, Erik the 
Red, emigrated to Greenland in the latter half of the 
tenth century. Southward lies the first projection, — 
the point where Leif went ashore and found the rocks 
stratified, and called the region " Helluland." We call it 
" Newfoundland." It was mountainous, uninviting. Next 
to the south is the second projection into the sea, — a 
low, wooded country with gently rising land of white 
sandy shore, inviting to settlement. Leif had called it 
" Markland." We call it " Nova Scotia." This was the 
" Ahkada " {land there) of the Indians, and later the home 
of the ill-fated Acadians (Ahkadians) and the gentle 
Evangeline. And next was the third projection into the 
sea, — sandy, with low hills but no mountains, with a 
gulf on the west. It is called " Promontorium Vinlandiae," 
the most salient point of Vinland. We call it " Cape 
Cod." 



37 

This map, as its title tells us, was the work of Sigurd 
Stephanius in 1570. Now, who was he? Dr. Kohl, the 
geographer, tells us. 1 He quotes Torlaceus, from whom 
Torfaeus derives his information. He was a " learned 



r 



JiUetaM.0. /■A^*' 

-353$ 

LuuUqJS^. 







*bs*- 



Tf)t HortJ«AU*nti«, by faXcctaibtr 
Sigurd Sfcpbaaiujs in fy y<ar 1570 

man, once the most worthy rector of the school in Skal- 
holt, a well known place in Iceland, where the great 
collections of Icelandic literature were kept. He had 

1 Maine Hist. Soc. Col. 2d Series, vol. i., p. 107. 



38 

published also a description of Iceland. He appears," 
says Torfaeus, " to have taken his picture from the Ice- 
landic Antiquities." " Perhaps," says Dr. Kohl, " these 
Icelandic Antiquities were . . . draughts and charts." 

What could be finer? — an original map by an Ice- 
landic schoolmaster, with which to teach his pupils the 
story of the discovery of Vinland by their ancestors, and 
the outline for a freehand drawing, with the three pro- 
jections into the sea, — a not unworthy sketch of the 
features of the east coast of North America, which I 
asked you, at the outset, to hold in your mind's eye. 



IX. 



I have said that the chain is complete. It leads us 
from Greenland to Promontorium Vinlandiae. Let us 
look out from this eminence. We can see to the north- 
eastward the track of Bjarni and Leif and Thorwald 
and Thorfinn, stretching away to Herjulfsnaes, the home 
of Bjarni's father, and Eriksfjord, the house of Erik's 
father ; and to the south the course of Thorfinn and 
Thorwall along the Furdustrand. The map gives us the 
land of the Skraelings, whom the Norsemen encoun- 
tered, as north or west of the promontory, but no part 
of Vinland as lying south of Massachusetts Bay. The 
chain of evidence is complete; let us, however, turn our 
eyes downwards to the spot on which we stand. We 
find that what we thought the last link has resolved itself 
into a cable of many strands, and of augmented strength 



39 

in their mutual support, so manifestly incidental and 
altogether unpurposed. 

First of all, " Kjalarnaes " left its heir in " Carenas," 
a natural abbreviation by the mixed race of the Norse 
Colony and Indians. This became " C. Arenas " and then 
" Cape de Arena " (Cape of the Sand), which to Cham- 
plain's eye was "Cape Blanc," and to the Dutch, " Witte 
Hoeck." The profusion of a particular edible fish in this 
region, known to the Indians by the descriptive term 
"bacca-loo" (bacca, bay ; and loo, /ood), and to the Eng- 
lish as the cod, led Gosnold to call it " Cape Cod." So 
Promontorium Vinlandiae was Cape Cod. The map 
of Lok has preserved Carenas near the landfall of John 
Cabot. We shall return to this theme. 

Let us take another strand. Standing on the High- 
land Light Range to the south of Provincetown, with the 
map of Ruysch 1 in our hands, we look down on Carenas. 
We are standing on the cape visited by the early Portu- 
guese navigators of the period of 1 500-1 507. 1 We are 
on the headland at one side of a bay. The headland 
opposite, visible in favorable weather from the summit 
of the light-house tower (the Highland Light, two hun- 
dred "feet above the water), is distant some forty miles. 
To our left is Terra Nova — the new-found-land — of John 
Cabot, and the elevated range which he called " Montes 
Johannis," called by others " Montana Verde," and which 
we call the " Blue Hills " of Milton, from the midst of 

1 1500-1507; Ptolemy of 1508. The map is a precious revelation of the 
geography of the times. It is the coast of Asia, to which the region of Cape 
Cod has been attached by the cartographers. 



1 



40 

which flows the " Rio Grande" of Ruysch, the name borne 
for a century by the Charles. We are on the In. Bacca- 
lauras, the earliest suggestion of the name subsequently 
given, as we have seen, to the cape on which we stand, 
which was mistaken by the Portuguese navigators, as by 
Leif and by Gosnold, for an island. They thought the 
headland, as did De Monts, at Eastham. 1 Across the 
bay is the " Baia de Rockas," the herald of " Lamuetto " 2 
of Verrazano, of "Brisa" 3 and "Briso" of Gastaldi and 
Ruscelli and Mercator. 

An earlier chart (Cosa's of 1500) displays at this point, 
possibly, the flag of Venetian and British sovereignty set 
up by John Cabot on one of the two islands, observed 
to the right of his landfall. This sketch, doubtless fur- 
nished by a sailor who had been with Cabot and afterward 
shipped with Cosa, crudely presents the prevailing idea 
of the time, that the whole western world was a vast 
archipelago, along the skirt of which for three hundred 
leagues Cabot sailed on his return voyage (Stevens's 
Geographical Notes). 

An earlier sketch than Ruysch's, indeed coeval with 
Cosa's, presents to us " Cortereal," before whose " Cabo di 
Concepicion" (beginning — landfall?) we may be standing. 
One name on the chart (St. Louis) has survived all the 
abrasions and dislocations of time, appearing as "S. Luzia" 
on Cosa's map, " Luisa" on Verrazano (Maiollo), and " St. 
Loys" and " St. Louis" on Champlain's different editions 

1 See Slafter's " Champlain." 

2 From the Icelandic root lama, "to bruise " (Skeat). 

8 French for Breakers, a name many times repeated on our Coast-Survey 
maps of the region, — the forerunner of our "Baker's Island," off Salem. 




J-Cd e Spe ra 

C Kas 



4i 

(Dr. Slafter, Prince's Soc.) ; and by an eccentric freak of 
cartography and invention is seen to this day in " Cape 
Freels " (" Fra Luis," see Dr. Kohl) on the east coast of 
Newfoundland. The "San Antonio" of Cortereal has 
had an almost equal longevity. 

Our point of outlook commands on the one hand 
" Dieppa" (Provincetown?), the landfall of Verrazano in 
1524 (on his Terra Florida); and on the other the " Wun- 
derstrand" of Thorfinn — Nauset Beach — as described 
possibly in the letter of Verrazano to the King, and pic- 
tured on the maps of Maiollo and Hieronymus Verrazano 
from data of the great expedition, — stretching away to 
the southward with its slightly curved, bold, and harbor- 
less shore, and its occasional inlets through the outer 
sand-bars. 

From the heights in Yarmouth, the Town Hill, ac- 
cording to Hieronymus Verrazano, fancying himself at 
Darien, one may look down on one side into the Atlantic, 
and on the other side into the Western Sea, the " Mare 
Verrazano " on Lok's map (the Pacific), six miles apart. 
This isthmus is preserved in the map of Lok dedicated 
to his friend Sir Philip Sidney in 1582, which forever 
associates it with Carenas and John Cabot's landfall 
and the site of Norumbega. Numerous maps of the 
half-century preceding Lok contained the isthmus. It 
was along this water-front that Verrazano found among 
some small hills a lake three leagues in circumference, 
connected with a sea by a deep river half a league 
long, at whose mouth the tide was not less than eight 
feet. We may see later that Leif and Thorwald and 



42 

Thorfinn were familiar with this lake. The mistaken 
impression of Hieronymus Verrazano led him to place 
the alternative name of " Yucatan " (see Verrazano's Map, 
Murphy's "Verrazano") to the north, covering the land 
immediately to the west, with its water-front stretching 
from Cape Ann to Cape Cod. 

Besides the name "Yucatan" it was also called "Norum- 
bega," " the Land of the Bretons," " Verrazana," " Gallia," 
" New France," and " the Land of Gomez," — being the 
theatre of exploration of this last-named navigator, under 
instruction from the king, in the year following Verra- 
zano's voyage. Such are the names with which Vin- 
land was endowed before she became the Massachusetts 
of the Puritans. 

Later still we see Allefonsce, in 1 542-1 543, learning 
from the race on the shore that the tongue of land 
we are considering was described by the Indian name 
of " Norom-begue " (Norumbega, — divider of a bay). 
Allefonsce says, as if he had before him the chart of 
John Cabot and the map of Ruysch and that of Maiollo : 
" These landes lye over against Tartarie, and I doubt 
not but that they stretch toward Asia, according to the 
roundnesse of the world. And therefore it were good 
to have a small shippe of seventy tunnes to discover the 
coast of New France [on the back side of Florida 1 ], 
for I have been at a bay [Barnstable] as farre as 42 
betweene Norumbega and Florida, and I have not 



1 "On the back side of Florida" seems to have been a conviction which 
Hakluyt thoughtlessly inserted. The original French reads " to discover the 
coast of Florida," — pour descouvrir la coste de la Floride. 



43 

searched the ende, and I know not whether it pass 
through." 1 

Our eye follows him down to the entrance to Barn- 
stable Bay, which he conjectured might lead through to 
the ocean of the "Spice Islands " (the Pacific); and in his 
coursing along the Cohasset Rocks and the Glades and 
the Brewsters into our harbor, he learned of the trading- 
post on the river, which he gathered bore the same 
name as Cape Cod did, the name " Norom-begue" (our 
Charles), or " Norombega," as John Cabot heard it at 
Salem Neck. 2 

It was in the record of this voyage that Allefonsce 
revealed the mystery of the two Cape Bretons, two 
Labradors, two Floridas, three Terra-Novas, several St. 
Johns, and many Norumbegas, which have so long per- 
plexed the study of the cartography of our coast. 

But we are still considering the eminence behind Prov- 
incetown, whose harbor I looked down upon the other 
day, glittering with its countless craft from the Banks, and 
its mackerel fleet altogether of seven hundred sail. What 
a contrast with the scene as it appeared to Allefonsce 
in the middle of the sixteenth century, when this point 
of land was animated only by a handful of Indians, and 
others of mixed descent! 

i Hakluyt, vol. iii. p. 239, ed. 1600. 

2 " Norumbega," — Algonquin: divider of a bay; divider of water ; 
shallows between still waters on a rivers tongue j headland; cape. 



44 
X. 

THE TESTIMONY OF NAMES. 

The last strand presents a kind of evidence that will 
commend itself to your appreciation, and which England 
is full of, — the evidence of previous occupancy found in 
the names of places. You do not need to be told the 
meaning of " Dock Square," — the spot so near which we 
are standing. There is water in the name, and wharves, 
and shipping, and landing, and embarkation, though there 
is half a mile of solid land between us and the sea. You 
may have to think a little to see what the English 
" Chester " means. You do not necessarily at first glance 
recognize caslra, and a Roman camp, and cohorts, and 
legions. When the guide points out to you in London 
the site of the " Tabard Inn," from which, he tells you, 
Chaucer and his friends set out for Canterbury, there 
rises before you a hostelry carrying a name that goes 
back to the prevalence of Latin speech. You do not 
quite so promptly see in Bergsabem, the " Taverna Mon- 
tana " of Roman times, in the mountains along the upper 
valley of the Rhine. But with a little thought you see in 
it, as in " Tabard," the familiar equivalent and heir, — 
our tavern. " Berg " is mountain ; " Bergsabern " is half- 
German and half-Latin, with a little sacrifice to the facility 
of utterance. Latin names of places are to be met with 
in England from the ancient Roman wall on the north 
to the cliffs of Albion. They point to the occupancy by 
a Latin race, of which we have historical record for more 



OS 



"> ■' r 


























JHQIM 







45 

than two thousand years. But the record is also in the 
language and the laws of England. It confirms the 
evidence of the names of places ; but the names would 
be evidence alone of the early presence of the Romans 
in England. I need not dwell on it. 

Other names point to the aboriginal inhabitants of 
England, or at least, the people the Romans found. 
Others still, to the invasion by the Saxons under Hen- 
gist ; and others to the conquest by William of the 
Normans (Northmen). Certain names ending in wold 
and certain others ending in mont do not need to be 
mentioned as pointing to the occupancy by Saxon and 
French. But along the coast of England and Scotland 
we have names ending in ness or noes, — as " Dunge- 
ness," "Caith-ness," " Busha-ness," " Clyth-ness," " Tarbet- 
ness," — all pointing to Norway, where names of capes 
with this ending are common. They abound in Ice- 
land and in historic Greenland, and two of them are 
in the Saga stories of America discovered by the 
Northmen ; one of these is " Kjalarnes," and the other 
" Cross-a-nes." 

Do " Dungeness " and " Tarbetness " and " Holderness " 
point to former occupancy by Northmen ? To what do 
" Kjalarnes " and " Cross-a-nes " point but to former oc- 
cupancy by Northmen? 

Now it happens — Dr. Trumbull has pointed it out in 
the case of our Indian dialects — that in the main the 
Indian names of New England describe the places to 
which they are attached. The same thing has been 
remarked with regard to the names of places, streams, 



mountains, bays, etc., topographical or geographical, of 
other parts of our country and of Old England as well. 
Like observations have been made in other lands. This 
habit of applying descriptive names to places appears 
to have been universal among aboriginal people. In 
some cases among our Indians, as Dr. Trumbull and 
also the Rev. Mr. Rand, of Nova Scotia, the author 
of the " Mic Mac Dictionary," have remarked, the names 
are reminiscences. Sometimes a name is both descrip- 
tive and a reminiscence. " Kjalarnes " is of this char- 
acter. It is Norse for keel nose, as we have seen, and 
also describes Cape Cod, the end of the curve being the 
sandspit across the harbor from Provincetown. 

On the early map of Lok, 1582, in part a sketch from 
the chart of John Cabot, 1497, as I conceive, " Carenas"is 
found at our Cape Cod. That Carenas is Cape Cod may 
be said to have been uniformly accepted by writers upon 
the cartography of the New England coast. The ques- 
tion arises, Is this Carenas a memory, preserved by the 
offspring of the early Norsemen who intermarried with 
the natives ? In other words, Is Carenas on Lok's map 
— the Cape Cod of to-day — other than the corrupted 
" Kjalarnes " of Thorwald and Thorfinn ? An intelligent 
Norwegian sailor has told me that the merging of the 
/ and r into one is not unusual, and that among the 
common people of Norway one syllable, as we pronounce 
the word, would be almost dropped. It would become 
nearly Kolr-a-nes, with a broad sound of a, more like 
that of long 0, and a vanishing sound of the j} On 

1 Rafn says " ' Kjalarnes,' from 'kjolr ' — keel, and ' naes ' — nose." 



w£y>Ji f 



/ aiu merit? J&oui Crfis ) Jetectic 

{^bristopnorus Lclttint'its, celcpcrrimis , atue prvpe ^Ame 
inpttis */l'tf.aJ Reqi) Lasteiu nsic inocntis , ulh* 
s an/am yv,spuir : c/<h ^Americas 'Vefp, 



efatiis, a& 



Putins 'Thiy 



'.'"■" 



04, 



faint? vest anna in cpntineiitem iyjam Jelahts, 
mcritp ii'ji namen debet) vehri hmc nostrc aajecit; In ana C 
Cprtereatii poitca, tmnntum a Boreati eius parte ad \4Ltliiecu at 
tctunt Mint a R -Wepadci aai.de Raza traetnm anna ij;pp intuit 
rem reaaiait : ^Ac Baucis tunc a/mis intcriectii yti.veruuat 
^5gs. pmn.es nev* Franeie. a jj.' latitu finis araau aaC^ae 
''Breton , mariHinas pros *Anne tieza. 
clar'uu patefecit- . 




47 

M. Meriam's map, of about the end of the 16th centuiy, 
occurs, near Cape Cod, " P. Coaranes," — evidently a name 
from the natives, and almost coincident with " Kolr-a-nes." 
From " Coaranes " to " Carenas" is not far. " Carenas," by 
careless copying, as already intimated, became "C arenas," 
with a hiatus after the C, and then " C. Arenas," with a 
capital A, and then " Cape de Arenas," and then " C. de 
Arena ; " and so from being the " cape of the keel," it 
became " Sand Cape." 

Again, what are " East Chop " and " West Chop," 
the names still borne by the headlands on either side of 
the entrance to Holmes Hole, the principal harbor of 
Martha's (Martin's) Vineyard, but the memories of " Ost 
Kop" and " Vest Kop " of the Northmen ? As the Eng- 
lishmen spelled the Scotch "kirk" with ck, displacing 
the k, so the emigrant Englishmen would naturally, in 
writing, displace the k of "Kop" with ck, making "Chop." 
There is another West Chop, near Chatham. 

Is " No Man's Land," the name of a small island south- 
west of Martha's Vineyard, a memory of " No'thman's 
Land"? 

These are not English names. They are not Indian 
names. What remains but that they are inheritances 
of the time when Norse colonies were in the territory 
of Massachusetts, — preserved, as before intimated, by 
men who might boast of Norse blood in their veins ? 
There are, to the careful student, unmistakable evidences 
that the navigators recorded names of places given them 
by natives, as understood or as translated into their own 
languages. 



4 8 

Here is another striking coincidence, — this time 
nearer Faneuil Hall. North of Cape Cod there has 
been preserved to us the name " Norman's Woe," or 
" Norman's Oe." It is a small, rocky island on the west 
side of the entrance to Gloucester Harbor. If we go 
back to the maps of the centuries following the time 
of these Norse navigators, we find kindred names in 
the same region. On Maiollo's (Verrazano's) map of 
1524-7 there is given, at a point in the neighborhood 
of Boston Harbor, "Norman Villa," that is, Northman's 
House. It is also given on the globe of Ulpius of a few 
years later, now in the possession of the New York 
Historical Society. Of this map of Maiollo, preserved 
in the Ambrosian Library at Milan, I have photographic 
negatives, through the kindness of Rev. Dr. De Costa. 
It seems to have been produced from memoranda of 
the same date as those of the map of Hieronymus Ver- 
razano, but collected by a different hand, and so virtually 
an independent authority. 

On these authorities we have " longa villa," and " lunga 
villa " on one map and a globe, and " lunga villa " twice 
on a second map, which, if it were a part of an Indian 
record, we should recognize as indicating the Indian 
"long house" of the Iroquois, with which we are familiar; 
and we know they were in this region about that time 
(Slafter's " Champlain "). "Villa" is also a collection of 
houses. 

To what else than the occupancy by Northmen does 
the name of " Norman Villa " on the map of Maiollo 
(Verrazano) and the globe of Ulpius point? 



\ 



if 



it 



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visa? 



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49 

Once more. There are on the maps of this region 
names of the church, such as "St. Christopher," and 
" Santanna," and " Lanunciata," and " St. Peter," and " St. 
Paul," and the " Bay of St. John the Baptist," " Clauda " 
(Acts xxvii. 1 6), and "Santa Maria," and the " Rio Buena 
Madre." The last two are names of our own harbor and 
river. Can these point to Bishop Upsi, or some of his 
successors, as their source ? 

Take into the same association the spot where Thor- 
wald, the recent Christian convert, desired to be buried, 
— "Cross-a-nes,"— and also "Refugio" and "Paradiso" 
in Massachusetts Bay, and the still preserved " Paradise " 
and " Purgatory," of the neighborhood of Newport. 

All these except the last two are on the coast between 
Cape Cod and Cape Ann, and all are in ancient Vinland. 

What do all these names mean? They certainly 
are not Algonquin or Iroquois names. They are not 
names bestowed by the Plymouth or Massachusetts Bay 
Colonies. 

Of most of them is there any other conceivable source 
than the memories lingering among a people whose 
ancestors were familiar with them? Are they not, for 
the most part, relics of names imposed by Northmen 
once residing here? 

But there is one other, and the chief name which we 
have — I had almost said unconsciously — preserved. It 
is " Vinland." 

On the map of Stephanius, the Icelandic schoolmaster, 
we have the cape called " Promontorium Vinlandiae," — 



5o 

the Promontory or Headland of Vinland. It is the most 
southern of the three projections into the sea displayed 
on his map, — the three projections of which, you will 
remember, I asked you to take note. Here is the name 
bestowed by Leif, masked in Latin, as it continued 
to be masked, more or less, in the translations into the 
languages of the navigators visiting our shores, or of 
the authors of the maps on which the name occurs ; 
and this has been continued, as we shall see, down to 
our day. 

The region to the south is not given, and the bay to 
the north, reaching to Markland, our Nova Scotia, cor- 
responds to the great bay which Dr. Kohl proposed to 
call the " Gulf of Maine." 

Stephanius's map bears date of 1570. De Laet, a direc- 
tor of the great Dutch West India Company, published a 
work in 1625 entitled the " Niewe Wereld," in which was 
a map of the New England coast. On this map, a little 
to the north of Cape Cod, in the neighborhood of Nor- 
mans' Oe, and Norman Villa and Boston, he has given, 
quite within the main land, — not at all, properly speaking, 
on the coast, — 

I. de Bacchus. 
It is the island of the wine god, where the choice fruit- 
yielding vine grows naturally. The name looks as if it 
had come down from the time when all the New World 
was supposed to be made up of islands, as they were 
figured on Cosa's map, and as Columbus believed, and 
as did Allefonsce, and as Ramusio wrote, down to 1556. 
De Laet wrote in the light of a vast collection of original 



§ 
W-fs 



5i 

manuscripts, and though he does not mention it he 
probably owes the name to Champlain. We shall pres- 
sently see that " Isle of Bacchus " is the equivalent of 
" Vinland." 

In 1671, on Montanus's map of the New England coast, 
" I. de Bacchus " was applied to an island off the coast, at 
a point where Champlain says he gave that name to an 
island, since recognized perhaps (Rev. Dr. Slafter, Prince 
Society) as Richmond Island, but which he did not place 
on any of his maps that I have seen. But on this map 
occurs another name that points to Vinland more immedi- 
ately, or a memory of it among the aborigines, of whom the 
navigators made inquiry. We have " Wyngaerts Hoek," 
and " Wyngaerts Island ; " a cape of vine gardens, and an 
island of vineyards. Yard and gaerd are equivalents ; a 
and t are interchangeable. Is this a vineland — Vin- 
land ? 1 

Later still, 1689, fifty years after Harvard College had 
been founded, we have on a map dedicated by L. Nolin 
to the Abbe Baudrand, " Isles de Bacchus ou Wyngaerden 
Eylandt." This map was enriched, as the compiler tells 
us, from the personal investigation of charts in the ar- 
chives of Venice. The name is below the mouth of the 
Kennebec. The outline of shore gives Boston Harbor, 

1 It will not escape the reader whose eye may have rested on a brochure 
entitled " The Landfall of Cabot and the Site of Norumbega," that against 
" Wyngaert's Hoeck," against " Salem " = Naumkeag = the ancient Norum- 
bega, we find " Bristow," the name of Cabot's port of embarkation in 1497, 
recognized in his Landfall (as I conceive) by Prince Charles, in the name 
arbitrarily given by him at the suggestion of Captain John Smith. The name 
of " Bristonum " appears also on the site of Salem on the map of Creuxius, 
1660. Winsor's "America," vol. iv. p. 3S9. 



1 



52 

and the Charles dividing at a lake into two branches, 
like the Charles and Stony Brook. 1 

There is an Italian map in " The Documentary History 
of New York" (O'Callaghan, vol. i.), apparently made by 
Lucini, and of about this period, having on it, against 
Cape Ann and the " Three Turks Heads " of John Smith, 
the name " C di Wingaert " (Cape of Vineyard, or Vine- 
land), and farther north, "I. di Winter;" and under it, 
" Wingaert," a vineyard. 

On a French map of 1558, near the entrance to Boston 
Harbor, we find " Les Jardines." 2 

There is another map — there may be many, of course, 
which I have not seen — to which I will allude. It carries 



1 One will not fail to observe on Nolin's map the name of Fort Norum- 
begue, alternative to Pentagoet. This confusion, came from a misapprehen- 
sion of Champlain, as I have elsewhere pointed out. It is the most unmis- 
takable recognition of a Villa or Fort of Norumbega, such as Allefonsce and 
Thevet mentioned. There is some confusion of names and of relative topog- 
raphy, but the bay can only be Boston Bay, and the river the Charles, near 
which the memory of the Fort lingered down to the navigator whose charts 
lay before Nolin. On this map appear the familiar names of " Dorcester," 
"Newton," "Plymouth," "Boston," "Providence," etc. 

- There are names like " Lan-prunera " and " Lan-prunella," that suggests 
the ripe beach-plum; and "Oliva" (green, or unripe plums), and "Palmas" 
(Indian corn-fields), and " Figla" (prickly pear fruit), and "Plagia Calami" 
(cat-tail flags ?), — which sound like products of the soil, all of which are found 
on Cape Cod. See Map of Hieronymus Verrazano. 

The Pilgrims found on Cape Cod that " corn had been planted three or four 
years ago." " They found " also " divers cornfields." (Davis, " Plymouth.") 
Thorfinn's Scotch servants, sent out at the east end of Cape Cod, brought him 
an ear of corn. Winthrop obtained in 1630, 100 pounds of corn from the south 
side of Cape Cod. " Gosnold went here ashore and found the ground full 
of pears [prickly pear ? cactus] strawberries, hurtleberries, etc." Were the 
pears picked to furnish figs to be laid before the writers ? The fruit of the 
prickly pear resembles the fig. 

Hakluyt also refers to pears and figs as occurring still further north. 
Vol. iii. p. 239, ed. 1600. 



i 



1 



53 

the name " Vingaert's Eylan," near Cape Ann. It has 
some interest as being a heliotype copy of a very pre- 
cious original autograph map in the collection of Mr. 
S. L. M. Barlow, to whom I am indebted for it. 

Cham plain attaches the name "Chouacoit" to two rivers, 
one against the Saco in his record, but not on his map, 
the other one against Boston Harbor and the Charles, not 
named in his record, but preserved on his map. The ex- 
planation is at hand, — " Choucaoit " is preserved to us in 
the descriptive term " Cohasset," the dialectic equivalent of 
" Quonno-hassun-et," chain of rocks. Rocks or reefs are 
at both places ; and the Indian, if asked what he called the 
group, would have replied at either locality in the same 
expression, " Cohasset." At both places Champlain or some 
of the parties of De Mont's men observed, — but more 
abundantly than elsewhere, and with crowds of people, at 
the mouth of the Charles, — the vineyards, as well as plant- 
ings of corn and beans, squashes, cabbages, and tobacco. 
The Dutch have left us the name "Wyngaerden" or some 
modification of the name on their maps, and other na- 
tionalities have borrowed from them or brought down to 
us the name which the Northmen gave. All unite in 
testifying to the presence of the vine and the fruit, which 
suggested to Leif the name " Vinland." 

It is interesting in this story of the masked Vinland to 
find that Gosnold, in 1602, called Noman's Land (No'th 
man's land ?) Martha's Vineyard. What is now Martha's 
Vineyard was originally Mar/zVz's Vineyard, so called by 
Captain Martin Prinne, who visited the region the year 
after Gosnold was there. It bore this name, according 



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54 

to the Rev. Thomas Mayhew, down to 1650, when it 
was changed to " Martha's," and the name Gosnold gave 
to Noman's Land given up. Now what have we before 
us ? Two navigators attach names to islands, as if they 
had heard that they were parts of Vinland, — one giving 
his own Christian name to distinguish it. 

So the name in one form or another has lingered 
on our shores, and to-day Vinland is preserved in the 
two designations of " Vineyard Sound," and " Martha's 
Vineyard." 

XI. 

I have told you something of the evidence that Leif 
Eriksen was the first European to tread the great main- 
land southwest of Greenland. I have done as well as 
I could, in the time at my disposal, to present the evi- 
dence bearing upon the question whether or not he was 
the first European to place his feet on the shores of 
Massachusetts Bay. 

If I go back a little way, it will be only in the fewest 
words to tell you how worthy a man Leif was. 

His ancestry were of the early pilgrims, or puritans, 
who, to escape oppression, 1 emigrated, 50,000 of them in 
sixty years, from Norway to Iceland, as the early Pilgrims 
came to Plymouth. They were not of the Vikings, — the 
class that conducted predatory excursions over the then 
known seas. 

They established and maintained a republican form 
of government, which exists to this day, with nominal 

1 Grotius, with Danish researches before him, says it was in 874. 



55 

sovereignty in the King of Denmark; and their flag, 
like our own, bears an eagle in its folds. 

Towards the close of the tenth century a colony, of 
whom Leifs father, a Norwegian earl, and his family 
were members, went out from Iceland to Greenland. In 
about 999 Leif, a lad at the time of his father's emigra- 
tion, went to Norway, and King Olaf, impressed with his 
grand elements of character, gave him a commission to 
carry the Christianity to which he had become a convert 
to Greenland. He set out at once, and with his soul on 
fire with the grandeur of his message, within a year 
accomplished the conversion and the baptism of the 
entire colony, including his father. His high soul was 
inspired with Bjarni's story of a land away to the south- 
west, to which in stress of weather fourteen years before 
he had been driven. He bought Bjarni's ship, virtually 
acquired his log, and set out. He had only to look for 
three prominent points. We have heard his story. 

We think of him as a man of high qualities; the 
Sagas portray them. What enthusiasm, what self-con- 
trol ; what capacity to rule men, make them confide in 
him, trust and love him ; what equipoise, what resources, 
what manly presence; what an eye, what singleness of 
purpose, what courage, what reserve force, what strength 
he must have had! We think of what he did} 

1 " Leif was a man strong and of great stature, of dignified aspect, wise 
and moderate in all things." — Smith, p. ioi. 

" One of the men asked Leif as they were nearing Greenland, ' Why do 
you steer the ship to that quarter, directly in the teeth of the wind?' Leif 
answered, ' I guide the helm, and look out at the same time ; tell me if you 
see anything.' All denied that they saw anything at all of particular impor- 
tance. ' I am not sure,' said Leif, ' whether it is a ship or a rock which I see 



56 

Who were the people who gave him birth ? If you 
would have a comprehensive grasp of the characteristics 
of the race, I commend to you " The Story of The Nor- 
mans," by Sarah Orne Jewett. This ancient race, once 
supreme on 'all the seas they sailed, has made the world 
of all time its debtor in more ways than one. 

You would scarcely forgive me if I failed in such pres- 
ence as this to call to mind one Scandinavian, whose name 
should not be omitted on any occasion where achievements 
in navigation of American waters are remembered. The 
ancient Roman ships that brought tribute to the Tiber, 
and the triremes that bore Agrippa and Antony and 
Cleopatra at the battle of Actium, as well as the mer- 
chant marine of Tyre and Venice, were all flat-bottomed. 
It was the Northmen who invented the keel that made 
possible navigation of the stormy waters of the Atlantic. 
That was long ago. It revolutionized the service of the 
ocean. Who that has seen the Lofoden fishing-fleet of 
to-day, stately, majestic, beyond language to picture, has 
not felt the power with which the inventions of North- 
men long ago stamped the single-masted, square-sailed, 
dragon-headed, ancient ship of Norway ? But in recent 

in the distance.' They all presently see it and pronounce it to be a rock. 
Leif had so much sharper eyes than all the others that he saw men upon the 
rock. . . . 

"On reaching the wreck, the captain was asked his name — 'Thorer! — 
and yours?' 'Leif.' 'Are you the son of Eirek the Red, of Brattahlid?' 
Leif told him he was, and added, ' I wish now to offer you all a place in my 
ship, and to take also as much of your goods as my ship will carry.' . . . 
When Leif lent his ship to his brother to go to Vinland, he charged him first 
to 'fetch away from the rock all that Thorer left there.' " — Smith, pp. 
104-107. 



57 

times one man, himself bearing the name we honor to-day, 
is remembered in every land for his contributions to the 
development of ships-of-war, not less than vessels for the 
merchant service. He is still living, working his twelve 
hours a day, at the age of eighty-four. 

To him we owe the screw ; to him the telescopic chim- 
ney, and the idea of placing the boilers and machinery of 
steamships below the level of the sea, where, in men-of- 
war, they would be beyond the reach of shot and shell. To 
him are we indebted for numerous devices in submarine 
warfare, and for the hot-air engine, and many others I 
might name. Of one invention more only will I speak. 
Most of you remember the great revolution in naval war- 
fare which came with the appearance of the " Monitor " 
at Hampton Roads. One cannot recall the relief which 
the achievements of that vessel brought to millions of 
agonized hearts at a critical period in the history of the 
late war, without feeling that our country's well-being 
was at that time very closely knit with the genius and 
unselfish devotion of John Ericsson. 

If you would see how a Briton regards the ancient 
Norsemen, the contemporaries of Lief and his country- 
men, hear what Mr. Laing, a Scotchman, or, more strictly, 
a native of the Orkneys, having, with us and these kin- 
dred of ours, a common inheritance of blood from Scan- 
dinavia, says : " All that men hope for of good government 
and future improvement in their physical and moral con- 
dition ; all that civilized men enjoy at this day of civil, 
religious and political liberty, — the British Constitution, 



5§ 

representative legislature, the trial by jury, security of 
property, freedom of mind and person, the influence of 
public opinion over the conduct of public affairs, the 
Reformation, the liberty of the press, the spirit of the 
age, — all that is or has been of value to man in modern 
times as a member of society, either in Europe or in 
America, may be traced to the spark left burning upon 
our shores by the Norwegian barbarians." 

A man of these people, a scholar of the times, a man of 
faith, a gentleman, an athlete, a man of deeds and renown, 
was Leif. To him a monument has been erected. 



XII. 

In thus fulfilling the duty we owe to the memory of the 
first European navigator who trod our shores, we do no 
injustice to the mighty achievement of the Genoese Dis- 
coverer under the flags of Ferdinand and Isabella, who, 
inspired by the idea of the rotundity of the earth, — so 
long before demonstrated, but practically before his time 
exercising little influence on the philosophy of maritime 
discovery, — and with the certainty of reaching Asia by 
sailing westward sufficiently long, set out on a new and 
entirely distinct enterprise, having a daring and a con- 
ception and an intellectual train of research and deduc- 
tion at its foundation quite his own. 

While the Norse adventurers undoubtedly had all the 
geographical knowledge of the time, it is possible that they 
regarded Vinland as only a very distant prolongation of 
the coast, going out as they conceived north and west from 



59 

Norway. Their oceanic world was the North Atlantic. 
The men of enterprise of southern Europe, at the end of 
the fifteenth century, could profit by all the accumulations 
of knowledge of the five hundred years following the bold 
navigators of the time of Olaf. Marco Polo had been in 
the East. Southern Europe had otherwise learned of the 
Oriental world. The Northmen had shared in the Cru- 
sades ; their conquests might be traced on the shores of 
the Mediterranean. Maritime discovery had led far down 
the coast of Africa. A voyage of anticipated great length 
now involved heavy outlay. The aid of the State or of 
wealthy patrons must be invoked. Men who contem- 
plated or advocated voyages of discovery deemed it a 
duty, before bringing their projects to the attention of 
royal sources of patronage, to seek information in every 
accessible and promising quarter. We have an example 
of a later date in the "Brief" of Frobisher, in the interest 
of the northwest passage, and of Sir Humphrey Gilbert 
in the search for Norumbega, and the appeal of Hakluyt's 
" Western Planting," and John Smith's efforts to estab- 
lish an English Colony in New England. Columbus 
ought to have visited Iceland, if he could, whether he did 
or did not; and so of Ireland or Britain, or the Faroes, 
and other accessible countries that would enable him to 
strengthen his appeal. Whatever he might have found 
in Thule could at the best have afforded him little aid 
in the line of the mighty vision of reaching the land at 
the antipodes by sailing westward from the Pillars of 
Hercules. 

I submit a map of the world as known at the time of 



6o 

Columbus, on which are sketched the veiled American 
continents north and south, of which before him, except 
the part known to Northmen, no one, not even Columbus, 
had a dream. Columbus did not sail toward Vinland, 
whatever he may have learned of its discovery. 

Aside from the splendid personal qualities of Leif 
which would challenge admiration in any age, it is not 
impossible that some have been led to accredit to him a 
measure of rank as a discoverer which he would have 
instinctively repudiated. What he would have patiently 
heard said of himself would have been something like 
this : He had seen in Bjarni's story internal evidence of 
its truth, had appreciated its possible stupendous signifi- 
cance, had the intrepidity to act upon it, had bought his 
ship, and had sailed away to verify his relation. To this 
end he had given a year of his life. He had found what 
Bjarni had said was true, and in the most essential service 
had prepared the way for the settlement of the country 
which Bjarni first saw. 

Through Leif and Bjarni the American continent was 
discovered by Northmen, and Leif was the first European 
to set foot on its shores, — the first to tread the soil of 
Massachusetts. 

Boston will welcome the proposition to set up in 1892 
a fit statue to Columbus. 

We unveil to-day the statue in which Anne Whitney 
has expressed so vividly her conception of the leader who, 
almost nine centuries ago, first trod our shores. Do not 
be surprised if you fail to distinguish between your ideal 




c? 



/.J 



L^J^ -DIE OCEANISCHE SEITE DESBEKAIM'S 



tiie Aiie^ac ofivhic(( a. I'd] 
bj Ml riortkeix bcrt<onura.i 
Knoarn to 
The. North. Men. 



6i 



hero and the artist's creation. Such a creation Appleton 
and Longfellow would have set up in Boston. Could we 
but hear their acclaim at such fulfilment of their desire, 
how rich would it be with the benedictions of Art and 
Song! Such a memorial Ole Bull, earliest of all, con- 
ceived and dreamed of, worked and sang for. This is the 
consummation the loyal heir to his name and purpose for 
years has longed and labored and prayed for. I believe 
it is worthy of Leif and of Boston. 



APPENDIX. 



APPENDIX. 



A. 

DIGHTON ROCK. 

The changes which have taken place in the sur- 
face of the rock since the copy of the inscription by 
Mr. James Winthrop in 1788 suggest a doubt of the 
great age of the characters inscribed. The rock is 
fissile, liable to erosion from alternate frost and sun- 
shine, alternate immersion in water more or less salt, 
and exposure to the air. It may be questioned whether 
a hundred years hence the figures will not have wholly 
vanished. In view of these considerations, it may be 
asked, Could the original inscription have been produced 
nearly nine hundred years ago ? 

B. 

LATITUDE OF VINLAND. 

For the different views there have been able writers 
among the Icelandic and Danish scholars. The ancient 
Icelanders had no clocks. They had a kind of sun-dial, or 
substitute for one, in a system of day-marks. Their prin- 
cipal division of time was into eighths of a day, watches 



66 

of three hours each. Had they used the lesser divisions 
of time, there might have been no question among the 
antiquaries. Erasmus Rask, the great Danish philolo- 
gist, wrote Mr. Wheaton to this effect in December, 
1 831: "Since only the greater and not the hour divis- 
ions of the day according to the old Icelandic method 
are mentioned in the Sagas, the length of the shortest 
day will always be liable to various interpretations." 
The more important readings of the Sagas rest on 
whether the shortest day of the year should begin at 
half-past seven in the morning, and end at half-past 
four in the afternoon, holding the sun above the 
horizon for nine hours ; or begin at six o'clock, and 
end at three o'clock, holding the sun up for only six 
hours. The discussion of the latitude of Vinland is 
thus brought to revolve around the meaning of a sin- 
gle ancient Norwegian or Icelandic word, eyktarstad, 
here translated half-past four in the afternoon. If 
their shortest day was, in reality, only six hours long, 
the place of observation of its length, whatever else 
may be. involved, could not have been to the south of 
Labrador. 

I insert here a diagram from Rafn's " Americas Op- 
dagelse, etc." 1 It was prepared by Finn Magnusen, of 
the Northern Antiquaries. 2 It may afford some insight 
into the disputed question. It will be observed that 
certain dotted divisions of eighths correspond with early 

1 Discovery of America in the year ten hundred, from the old Norse manu- 
scripts of C. C. Rafn, Copenhagen, 1841. 

2 See Voyages of the Northmen to America. Prince Soc. Edited by Rev. 
Dr. Slafter. 



67 

directions for sailing, having the North Star for the un- 
changing starting-point. The halving of these watches 
and the division of the period between half-past one and 
half-past four into thirds, which Magnusen suggests may- 
relate to sailors' dog-watches, are presented on the chart. 
These divisions, to which certain secular alternative 
names have been given, show one way out of which 
the confusion in the terminology may have arisen. 




The present condition of the problem of the latitude 
of Vinland, as determined by the length of the shortest 
day, may be thus summed up : — 

Rask pronounced it impossible of solution. Bishop 
Sveinson, of Skalkolt, did not understand it. Torfaeus, in- 
structed by the Bishop and the writings of Finn Johnson, 



68 

at first thought the day must have been six hours long. 
Forster interpreted the passage in the Saga to mean eight 
hours. Vidalin, and after him Rafn, held the day to be 
nine hours long, which would give a latitude for Leif's 
place of observation between 41 and 43 . Humboldt 
accepted this view. So did Finn Magnusen, whose dia- 
gram is given above. Peringskiold made it ten or twelve 
hours long, carrying Vinland far to the south. 

We need not wonder that Bancroft, Palfrey, Cabot, and 
other careful students of the Norse story have felt the 
shadow of the prevailing doubt. It is not a new per- 
plexity. It has existed for centuries. Is it impossible to 
escape from it without rejecting the whole account as a 
myth ? No one may lightly set aside the crucial test of the 
latitude. Let us see out of what the doubt has arisen. 

The earlier Sagas, including those relating to the dis- 
covery of America by the Northmen, were committed to 
writing toward the close of the fourteenth century, 1387 
to 1395, and constitute the " Flatey Book," a parchment 
folio, which later came into the possession of Bishop 
Sveinson, who parted with it to Frederick III., of Den- 
mark, about 1650. The king found certain obscurities in 
the language of the " Flatey Book," which it was deemed 
important to have cleared up. He accordingly sent a 
young man, Torfaeus, to obtain the needed correct under- 
standing. This is what Torfaeus says : " First, On the 
authority, if I rightly understood him, of Bryniulf 
Sveinson, the most learned of all the bishops of Skal- 
holt, to whom I was sent while yet a youth, in the year 
1662, with royal letters from my gracious master, King 



*. 


























































■ 









- 









6 9 

Frederick the Third, for the purpose of learning the 
gemcine signification of the more difficult ancient words 
and phrases, and then from the necessary correspondence 
of the time of sunset with that of sunrise, ... I had long 
ago given the meaning that the sun [on the shortest day 
in Vinland] passes six hours above the horizon." 

The highest authority among the scholars of Iceland had 
failed to make the matter clear to Torfaeus. The mean- 
ing of " eyktarstad," whatever that might be, associated 
with " dagmalastad " {breakfast- time) upon which two the 
sun shone for Leif on the shortest day in Vinland, was to 
Icelandic scholars apparently indeterminable. Torfaeus 
did not doubt the general story of the discovery by the 
Northmen. The difficulty of a Vinland, with its vines 
and meadows and forests and sand-beaches, on the north- 
eastern coast of Labrador, which is at the best a sheet of 
desolation, did not deter him 1 . There was to him, some- 
where, a Vinland discovered by Northmen. He enter- 
tained with Forster the possibility of a shortest day of 
eight hours, which would have carried Vinland to the 
northern half of Newfoundland on the east, than which 
only Labrador is more hopelessly destitute of forests 
and meadows and sand-beaches. The Sagas speak of it 
as flat rock, — the Helluland visited by Leif. Torfaeus 
was apparently so absorbed with the second half of the 
sentence that he did not consider adequately the first 

1 The accompanying most recent map by F. Leuthner, Bulletin of the 
American Geographical Society for December, 1887, embraces the coast on 
which the shortest day is six hours long, — from latitude 58 to 6o° ; seven 
hours for the shortest day would be farther south on the coast of Labrador, 
and eight hours would indicate the northeastern shore of Newfoundland. 



J 



70 

half. The whole sentence reads (Beamish's translation) 
as follows : — 

" Day and night were more nearly equal there than in 
Greenland or Iceland ; for on the shortest day was the 
sun above the horizon from half-past seven in the fore- 
noon till half-past four in the afternoon." 

Let us look at the latitudes : — 

Southern Iceland is 63 30/ 

Southern Greenland 6o° 

Northern Labrador, including the southern 

shore of Hudson's Straits 58° to 6o° 

Southeastern New England (Vinland) . . . 41 to 43 

The contrast between the days and nights of southern 
Greenland (6o°) where Leif passed his boyhood, and the 
days and nights in northern Labrador (6o°) shrinks to 
nothing ; while the contrast in latitude between that of 
Greenland and that of the region of Massachusetts is 
nearly 20 , — quite enough to arrest observation. 

MEANING OF " EYKTARSTAD." 

Down to the date of the completion of the Flatey 
Book the time of eyktarstad was half-past three in the 
afternoon (see Vigf usson, " Old Norse Dictionary"). This 
would give for the length of the shortest day in Vinland 
seven hours, which would place it between Belle Isle and 
northern Labrador, where the Vinland of the Sagas, with 
its forests and mild winters, plainly could not have been. 
Yet " eyktar-stad " was an old Norse word, familiar in 
Norway, carried with the pilgrims when they emigrated 
to Iceland, and from there carried by the emigrants to 
Greenland. It was something correlative to breakfast- 



7i 

time, — that is, as far from mid-day as breakfast-time was. 
It was something the sun shone upon on the shortest 
day of the year in Vinland, as it did on the same day at 
sunrise, — at breakfast-time, — the dagmala-stad. 

The suggestion forces itself upon one that "eyktar," 
like " dagmal," " meant primarily a meal, and came to 
mean the time of day," as Vigfusson says, " when the 
meal was taken." Vigfusson further says, " In Norway 
ykt means a luncheon taken about half-past three. But 
the passage in * Edda,' that autumn ends and winter be- 
gins at sunset at the time of eykt, confounded the com- 
mentators who believed it to refer to the conventional 
Icelandic winter, which (in the old style) begins with the 
middle of October and lasts six months. In the latitude 
of'Reykholt, the residence of Snorri" (who was the col- 
lector and author of the " Book of Edda ") " the sun sets 
at this time [the middle of October] at half-past four." 
(Vigfusson's Dictionary.) 

Half-past three and half-past four ! A discrepancy of 
an hour in two records of the same event ! 

This time of half-past four had been fixed by the as- 
tronomer Torlacius, who determined that on the 1 7th day 
of October at Skalholt, the seat of the most prominent 
school of Iceland, not far from Reykjavik, and less dis- 
tant from the place of assembly of the Althing, the sun 
sets at half-past four, with a commencement at midnight 
exactly opposite to high noon. 

Next came Finn Magnusen. October was the eighth 
month. A sailor's watch on shipboard was three hours, 
which was one eighth of twenty-four. This learned Ice- 



72 

landic scholar regarded " eykt " as meaning eighth. A 
ship's watch was an eykt. The cardinal points to the 
sailor, north, east, south, and west, furnished beginnings 
for four of them. Points halfway between furnished four 
more. Then Magnusen introduced others midway be- 
tween these, making sixteen divisions in all. To these 
he added the dog-watches of the sailor 1 and the terms of 
the church, of much smaller scope, and over the whole 
distributed the various names given on his chart. Eyk- 
tarstad to Finn Magnusen was also at half-past four. 

This chart, at first sight, challenges acceptance, it is so 
complete — so symmetrical. It rests, unhappily, on two 
assumptions : first, that the word " eykt " meant eighth ; 
and second, that the ancient Norwegian and Icelandic 
day commenced at 12 o'clock at night. Of the first, Vig- 
fusson (in his Dictionary) says: "The word " eykt " can 
have no relation to " atta " — eight" As to the second, we 
shall probably see, if we have not mistaken Magnusen's 
meaning, that he erred in making the ancient day of Ice- 
land commence at midnight. 

This brings us to the question, How came half-past 
three to be changed to half-past four ? 

The intelligent Norwegian sailor to whom I have 
already referred tells me — precisely what the chart of 
Magnusen asserts, and what the astronomical determina- 
tions of Torlacius confirm — that — 

1 These watches are given at no usual Icelandic meal-time, but between 
half-past two and half-past three, P. m., of our time. They are at one period 
of the day only, while the dog-watches of the existing usage among sailors 
are at two periods, — one early in the morning, from 4 to 6, and the other in 
the evening, from 6 to 8. 



73 

The time of the afternoon lunch, 
" " " sunset on the 17th of October in Southern Iceland, 
" " " half-past four of our time, and 
" " " the end of the secular day of ancient usage — 

are all one and the same. Other educated Norwegians 
(one, a graduate of Christiania) tell me the same. " How 
do you know it ? In the early times you had no clocks 
or watches." To this the sailor replied : " An afternoon 
meal is universal among Norwegian peasantry. It is at 
the end of the day." " But sunset varies," said I. " Yes ! 
that is true ; but half-past four is the time of the after- 
noon meal, half-way between dinner, the mid-day meal 
at twelve, and supper, the night meal at nine. That 
does not vary among the common people. It is a hu- 
man want. It is our modern Norwegian eftasvar, the 
afternoon meal." On turning to Vigfusson's " Icelan- 
dic Dictionary " of the language of the Viking age, I find 
under Eykt, first, that the word as used in the old Sagas is 
derived from a root auk, from which comes our augment, 
and the German auch ; and means also, added, extra (and 
in Vigfusson's " Prose Reader," to boot) ; second, that the 
word "probably first meant the eke meal, answering to 
English afternoon lunch (or our old-time "tea"?), and 
thence came to mean the time of day when the meal was 
taken ; third, that stad as applied to meals means meal- 
time. If we turn to familiar dialectic correspond- 
ences we find that f and ch of the old Teutonic dialects 
are sometimes found to be equivalents ; so that eft and 
eykt (ycht) are seen to be not very far from each other. 
The time at which the meal called by the Norwegians 



74 

of to-day " eftasvar," afterward — the extra meal, or 
afternoon lunch — is now taken in Norway, and has been 
taken from time immemorial, is half-past four of our 
time. As eft and ykt are only dialectic modifications 
of the same root, 1 it is clear that eyktarstad coincided in 
usage with eftasvar — with half-past four — with the end of 
the day at the beginning of the ancient Icelandic winter. 

It may be thought scarcely necessary to go beyond the 
philological argument and the astronomical calendar of 
the latitude of Skalholt, to point out the identity of half- 
past three of the ancient Sagas, the eyktarstad, with the 
half-past four of hereditary usage in Norway. But as the 
subject has been so long discussed, I may be pardoned for 
submitting what must be regarded as a demonstration of 
what Leif understood "eyktarstad" to mean. 

Let me present first a translation of the single sentence 
that has become of such significance. 

Meira var thar jafndaegri en a Graenlandi edr 

More was there equality-qf-day-and-night than in Greenland or 

Islandi; s61 hafdi thar eyktar-stad ok dagmala-stad um 

Iceland ; sun have there afternoon lunch-time and breakfast-time on the 

skamdegi. 
shortest day. 

One sees at a glance that the first half of the sentence 
— more was there equality of day and night than in 
Greenland or Iceland — virtually precludes Torfaeus's 

1 Vigfusson says the root auk, " in ancient Norse or Icelandic, is spelled 
eykd or eykth " [ = eykt, ykt, or ycht\ . 

Eyktar has its equivalent in southern Norway in eftas and often j in Eng- 
lish, after j in Dutch, achter ; in German, nach. 



75 

understanding of the second half. The absurdity of ac- 
cepting in the same breath the characteristics of the 
Vinland of Leif, and the region indicated by the short- 
est day as of either six hours or seven or eight hours 
has already been pointed out. If Vinland must have 
had for its shortest day only six hours, the whole story 
must have an entirely new understanding. 

The second branch of the sentence remains. What 
did " eyktar-stad " mean to Leif ? It meant to him what it 
meant to his Norse ancestors and to his Norse and Ice- 
landic contemporaries. The term " dagmala-stad" applied 
to one extreme of the day, of which " eyktar-stad" was the 
other extreme, and both were equally distant from mid- 
day. The term " dagmala-stad " has survived as breakfast- 
time. We have seen the modern meaning of " eyktar- 
stad," but that meaning is at variance, as a point of time, 
with the meaning of early record, by a whole hour. It 
applies to an afternoon meal, between the midday meal 
and supper. 

Let us now turn to the happy explanation of the 
source of all the confusion : — 

In 1814 and 1815 a Scotch gentleman, Dr. Henderson, 
went on horseback attended by adequate escort with 
suitable equipment, entirely around the coast of Iceland, 
and crossed the country in various directions four times. 
He had, as a scholar and philanthropist, supervised the 
printing of the Bible in Icelandic, and as the agent of the 
British and Foreign Bible Society, undertaken the dis- 
tribution of the Bible to such of the families of Iceland 



7 6 

as had not before possessed it. It became his duty to 
visit the clergy and learned men, including the officials, 
and also the people of all ranks in their homes. This 
labor occupied him, except during the winter, for two 
years. To no Englishman or Scotchman probably before 
or since has it been possible to become better acquainted 
with the general cultivation, the habits, the domestic life, 
the inherited ways, the usages, of the Icelandic people, 
than he was. His opportunities do not seem ever to 
have been equalled by any man of any nationality. 1 He 
published his journal. In that he remarks : — 

" The Norwegians who first went over to Iceland were 
sprung from some of the most distinguished families in 
the land of their nativity. . . . Their predominant char- 
acter is that of unsuspecting frankness, pious contentment, 
and a steady liveliness of temperament, combined with a 
strength of intellect and acuteness of mind seldom to be 
met with in other parts of the world. . . . Their language, 
dress, and mode of life have been invariably the same 
during a period of nine centuries" (Page 18: Perkins & 
Marvin edition, Boston, 1831.) 

Dr. Henderson passed some time at Grimstad, encamp- 
ing near the residence of a large family of much con- 
sideration. " They lived at a distance of thirty miles 
from their nearest neighbor. They were in the midst of 
a desert, except the grass lands, on the horizon of which 
were here and there snow and ice capped volcanic peaks, 
of fantastic appearance, and in almost every direction." 

1 The accompanying map, executed by Dr. Henderson, shows the extent of 
his journeyings. Finn Magnusen quotes Henderson, — apparently without 
wholly appreciating the significance of the revelation he makes. 




\ 



r 



77 

He says (p. 95) of these, " The most remarkable was Her- 
dubreid, or the broad-shouldered volcano, so called from 
the shape of the crater, which is distinctly visible from 
this place. This mountain forms the meridian day-mark 
of the Grimstad family." 

" Few of the Icelanders being in possession of watches, 
the only sun-dial they make use of is the natural horizon, 1 
— which they divide into eight equal points called day- 
marks, availing themselves of certain peaks or projections 
of the mountains ; or, in the absence of these, they erect 
pyramids of stones on the corresponding heights. Most 
of these kinds of pyramids had originally been raised by 
the first settlers from Norway, and have been held in repair 
from generation to generation ; 2 which circumstance will 
account for the difference of time between the Icelandic 
computation and that in common use with us. Their 
divisions are as follows : — 

1. Midnight about 11 o'clock p.m. 

2. Morning vigil " 2 " A.M. 

3. Mid-morning or shepherd's 

rising-hour " 5 " a.m. 

4. Day " 8 " a.m. 

5. High day, or noon .... "11 " a.m. 

6. Nona " 2 " p.m. 

7. Mid-evening " 5 " p.m. 

8. Night " 8 " p.m." 

Let us take the three principal points, and place them 

1 The day is in Iceland divided according to the position of the sun above 
the horizon. These fixed traditional marks are called " dags-mork," day-marks, 
and are substitutes for the hours of modern times. — Vigfusson, under Dagr. 

2 Those day-marks are traditional in every farm, and many of them no 
doubt date from the earliest settling of the country. — Ibid. 



7 8 

side by side with the corresponding points on Magnusen's 
chart. 

Henderson. Finn Magnusen. 

5 o'clock a. m. corresponds with 6 o'clock. 

ii " high-day, or noon " "12 o'clock, or mid-day. 

8 " at night " " 9 o'clock at night. 

It is clear that an hour must be added to the time ac- 
cording to the ancient day-marks to convert them into 
the corresponding day-marks of true time. An hour 
added to half-past three makes it half -past four, and the 
beginning of the hour correspondingly distant from 
mid-day is half-past seven. The day between them 
is nine hours long. 

This is in keeping with the companion observation 
given in the Saga, that the day and night were more 
nearly equal in Vinland than in Greenland or Iceland. 
It is in keeping with the presence of grape-vines, Indian 
corn growing wild, forests of timber, and meadows, and 
general mildness of winters in the latitude ascribed to 
Vinland. It is in keeping with the geographical, topo- 
graphical, and hydrographical features of the region 
as described in the Sagas. It is in keeping with 
the numerous Indian population of the region, as ob- 
served by Cortereal, Verrazano, Gomez, Allefonsce, 
Thevet, Champlain, John Smith, and the Pilgrims and 
Puritans. 

There is no other quarter of the globe which supplies 
all these required conditions of Vinland. 

Eyktar-stad is said to have been fixed " in the laws " 
as the end of the natural day at half-past four, p. m. (Cabot 



79 

page 12.) 1 May not the language of Rafn's note ("An- 
tiquitates Americanae,") admit the notion that its sense 
was merely a declaration of immemorial usage ? The 
people of Iceland were obedient to the hereditary usages 
of the early emigrants from Norway. The national dials 
— the day marks — which they had been familiar with, and 
in their every-day life had been guided by, were the same 
day-marks, perpetuated from generation to generation, that 
Vigfusson mentions, and that Dr. Henderson had found 
in his house-to-house visitation all over Iceland. They 
had observed that the day of our clocks and watches, — 
the day of twenty-four hours, commencing at our twelve 
o'clock at night, and having its mid-day twelve hours later, 
— which was introduced among them, in the extension of 
the more modern European designations, found the time 
of their national afternoon lunch — the time when the sun 
sets at Skalholt on October 17 — the half-way point be- 
tween the mid-day meal and supper — the " eyktar-stad " 
of Leif — at half-past four ; an hour later than would be 
reckoned with their midday meal, according to their day- 
marks, at eleven o'clock in the morning. 

In Northern Norway, whence the Icelanders went out, 
and from which the "day-marks" were transferred to 
Iceland, half-past four by our watches would be half-past 
three by their day-marks. 

1 See note, p. 108. There are in Vigfusson's Dictionary, also in the 
" Antiquitates " of Rafn, p. 436, and repeatedly in Gragis, allusions to the 
work upon Icelandic church laws or usages by Finn Johnson; and this writer 
is cited as high authority in more recent discussions of the meaning of eyktar- 
stad. I have not seen the work of Finn Johnson. In the " Index of Words 
and Phrases in the Ancient Laws of Iceland," Gragds, vol. ii. {Codex Juris 
Islandorum Antiguissimus), eykt is denned " trihorium." No mention of 
eyktarstad is made in the " Index," or in the body of the recorded laws or 
enactments of the Althing. 



8o 

In southern Norway, where clocks are used, the after- 
noon lunch is the preserved habit of the peasantry, and at 
the same hour as in northern Norway, but by their clocks 
at half-past four} 

Had Dr. Henderson been told that eyktarstad was at 
half-past four, and had he asked the proprietor of the 
estate at Grimstad where the sun stood at half-past four, 
there would have been indicated to him a correspond- 
ing point in the day-marks on the horizon, which his 
watch would have told him was half-past three. 

Had Dr. Henderson waited on the proprietor at half- 
past four on the 1 7th of October, he would have found 
him at his afternoon lunch at sunset — eyktarstad. 

The church, as its custom has been, appropriated 
the word eykt, and made it the equivalent of trihorium, 
" a time of three hours." It was this trihorium of 
the church that perplexed Torfaeus and his venerable 
instructor, Bishop Sveinson, — out of which came the day 
of six hours ; and one may see how our time of an hour 
later gave to Torfaeus the doubt in favor of the day of 
eight hours, and also how the day of seven hours may 
have arisen to still others. (See Vigfusson, under Eykt.) 

Henderson's chart shows at a glance how eyktarstad 
and half-past four were identical. This, as we have 
seen, gives a day of nine hours. 

The eyktarstad and dagmalastad, that is, the afternoon 
lunch-time and the breakfast-time of Leif at Vinland on 
the shortest day of the year, occurring at sunset and sun- 
rise, determines the latitude of Leif's houses to have been 
between 41° and 43 . 

1 The time of the lunch at half-past four is called eflasvar. Its equivalent 
is now written by some Norwegian peasants, aflensmad, — which is Danish. 



8i 



ANDRE THEVET. 



In 1556 we see Andre Thevet, a Frenchman, approach 
the shore. He called the point " Cape Baxe," and it was 
later called by others " Cabo de Baxos." " Bax " is the 
natural abbreviation of " Bacca-es," Algonquin for " little 
bay," which became "Bax" just as " Pautuck-es-et," as 
Dr. Trumbull notes, became " Pautuxet." It qualified 
Cape Cod Bay, with the Gurnet for an opposite head- 
land. " Baxos " is a double diminutive, — " Bacca-es-es," 
a very little bay, — a term qualifying the harbor of Prov- 
incetown, as compared with the larger Cape Cod Bay. 

Thevet is said to have been credulous, and some ques- 
tion his trustworthiness. Let us look at the other side. 
He has come up in nine days' sail, after passing twenty- 
odd days in the Sargasso Sea, — the first, I believe, to 
observe and describe it, — where, in February, 1556, he 
says he beheld the extraordinary phenomenon of a star 
with a tail (a comet) in the east. I had the curiosity to 
make inquiry of competent authority about a comet in 
the east in February, 1556, observable from the latitude 
of the Sargasso Sea. I wrote to Dr. B. A. Gould, of 
Cambridge, the astronomer of Cordoba, of the Argentine 
Republic, and Professor Pickering, of Harvard, and they 
were good enough to go over the records of that dis- 
tant time. They wrote me, confirming the statement of 
Thevet in all its points. 

It was Thevet who, as relating for himself or for 



82 

others, as he says he sometimes did, described Nantasket 
(Aiayascon), as having the form of a human arm, and 
recorded that Norumbega, on the Charles, was in the 
forty-third degree of latitude. Thevet was at the mouth 
of the Neponset. He gives its Indian name, " Anordie," 
and its exact latitude, 42 11'. He found a river at the 
entrance to Narragansett Bay; it was called "Anordie "(or 
"Arnodie"). This is pure Algonquin, " An-au-da." Cur- 
rent of water there was the answer to the question, " What 
do you call that?" 1 The name "Accadie" was the answer 
to a like question, — " Ahke-da," Land there. How natu- 
ral that this should confirm the conviction that No- 
rumbega was an island, as Allefonsce thought, though 
he was not clear whether its most southern point was at 
Buzzard's Bay, or Delaware Bay, or even Charleston. 

It was Thevet who, in a storm, sought refuge inside 
of Point Juuide (Judy), the name still preserved by the 
inhabitants of southern Rhode Island, — the modern 
Point Judith, — from which he sailed along the coast of 
Baccaleos, past the islands of the St. Croix, the Gurnet 
(Cross-a-naes), and Nantasket. This coast of Baccaleos 
of Thevet is recognized on Dutch maps of this region 
as late as 1660 in the name " Cabbeljous," a perversion 
in the position of letters not unusual in obeying the 
law of " facility of utterance." It is applied to points 
south of Cape Cod peninsula. We have such perversion 
in " Conanicut," familiar to us all as " Canonicut," — in 
" Anticosti " for " Natiscotec " the old Indian name of 
the time of Jacques Cartier (1535). 

1 See Thevet's " Cosmographie." 



83 

Point Judith is called on one map " Cabeliaus Hoeck;" 
on another (1666) "Cabbeljous" is apparently applied 
to the Island of Naushon. On another (Italian or Portu- 
guese?) we have "I. Cabeliano" and "C. Cabeliano." On 
Montanus's Map, " Cabbeliaus Eyl." All these names are 
in the same region, — the Vineyard Sound. Brevoort (Ver- 
razano) says "Cabeleau" is the Batavian name of the cod- 
fish. Batavia was a dependency of the Dutch. " Bacca- 
laos " is to this day the Spanish name of codfish. The 
Germans call the codfish " Kabeljau." All these have 
their original in the Indian descriptive name, Bacca-loo. 
The English equivalent was given by Gosnold, — the 
literal translation of bacca-loo — bay food, or off-shore 
food, — cod. " Baccalieu " was carried up to the east 
coast of Newfoundland on the Sebastian Cabot map 
of 1544. Point Judy is the most southern point to 
which I have found the name attached. 

The Pilgrims, sailing for Virginia, and brought here 
by agencies they did not comprehend, landed at this 
point before going on to Plymouth. 1 

D. 

WOOD'S HOLL. 

Mr. Joseph S. Fay has written a pamphlet to show that 
the word " Hole," as pronounced, which is now written 
" Holl " for the post-office on the mainland, Wood's Holl, 

1 Of this and of the reasons why, and of various other positions here in 
summary for the first time presented, a paper now in press will contain the 
evidence. 



— the o pronounced as in for, — applied to eminences in 
the neighborhood, and not to waterways, like Quick's Hole 
and Robinson's Hole, or the inner harbor at Holmes' Hole. 
This view may not so well apply to " Powder Hole " and 
to " Buder's Hole," near the end of Monomoy Island. 
The Icelandic word for " hill " is holl. The root is the 
source of " Ulles " in " Ulles-water " at Patterdale, of the 
Lake District in the north of England. It is the equiva- 
lent of our "hill." 

E. 

INDIAN CORN FOUND GROWING WILD IN VINLAND. 

The Sagas relate that King Olaf gave to Leif — it 
must have been with his commission to carry Chris- 
tianity to Greenland — two young Scotch 1 servants, a 
man and maid, — Haki and Haekja. After the wedding 
of Thorfinn and Gudrid at Brattahlid, Leif's paternal 
mansion, the host presented these servants to Thorfinn, 
who took them with him on his expedition to Vinland. 
While lying against the peninsula of Cape Cod — 
Furdustrand — Nauset Beach — Thorfinn, that he might 
know the quality of the neighboring land, sent out his 
fleet-footed servants to run for three days over the 
region, and return and report what they had seen, — 
the ship lying at anchor during their absence. They 
brought back, one a bunch of grapes, the other an 

1 Scotia then included Ireland. The servants may have been Irish, as 
rendered by Vigfusson. 



§5 

" ear of corn" They had two months earlier seen the 
" new sown " (Beamish) young corn at Hop. Ear of 
corn is the translation of the Icelandic word hveiti-ax 
by J. Toulmain Smith. Beamish (Rev. Dr. Slafter : 
Prince's Soc.) translated the same expression "ear of 
wheat? The doubtful point is this : was it Indian 
corn — zea mays — or was it wheat — triticum vul- 
gare ? Now, in reply : — 

i. Ax, by itself, is Icelandic for ear of corn (Vigfus- 
son); hveiti is wheat (Vigfusson). 

2. Skeat (Etym. Die.) says the word wheat is derived 
from a Teutonic root which means white, and qualifies 
the color of the flour made from the grain, kernel, or 
corn, of whatever kind. " Hviti " is white as applied 
to the White River in Iceland. (See Henderson's 
map.) " Hviti-ax " would be Icelandic for white ear of 
corn. 

This is in keeping with Capt. John Smith's ex- 
pression, " mayes, like Virginia wheat;" also with the 
early chroniclers of Florida, who speak of " Indian 
wheat." 

3. Indian corn (zea mays) is indigenous to America. 
It is still found, reduced to a dark mould, but retaining 
its form, in ancient Indian mounds. I have seen such 
kernels, apparently charred. They have been recently 
found in the very ancient remains of cities in New 
Mexico, by Mr. Cushing. 

Coronado ate corn cakes at Zuhi in 1537-40 (Ogilby). 
Champlain saw the growing corn in profusion along our 
New-England coast early in the 17th century. (See 



86 

Slafter's " Champlain," Prince's Soc. Publications.) The 
Pilgrims found it on their arrival in 1620. 1 

4. Indian corn does not ripen in Labrador, 2 and of 
course cannot perpetuate itself there — or grow wild, 
— sjalf sait (" self-,sown "), as the Sagas relate. 

What do these considerations show? 

a. They show, first, that wherever Vinland was, In- 
dian corn grew wild. 

b. Second, that this condition prevailed on the coast 
of Massachusetts. 

c. Third, that the claims of Labrador as the Vinland 
of the Northmen are barred out. 

1 The Pilgrims found on Cape Cod that " corn had been planted three or 
four years ago." "They found" also "divers cornfields." (Davis's "Ply- 
mouth.") Winthrop obtained in 1630, 100 pounds of corn from the south side 
of Cape Cod. We have on Verrazano's map of 1527, along the inner coast of 
Cape Cod, "Palmas," — a natural inference to one who had never seen half- 
grown Indian corn, and remarked its resemblance to some of the forms of 
palm. 

2 According to Dr. Goodale, Professor of Botany in Harvard University. 



ERRATA. 
"home" not "house," p. 38, 10th line from bottom. 

= ione d whether the name d oes not r^^fn^Xhe 
"Ckoucacit," p. S3> g th line from top> shouId be „ ^^ „ 
" Si* o'clock," p. 66, 13th line from top, should be « nine o'clock » 
The 74Cl:^ firSt ParagraPH Sh0UH h - e f °»°- d «* last para- 



' 



SAGAS 



EIREK THE RED AND THORFINN KARLSEFNI. 



The following page is a heliotype fac-simile from the manuscript of the 
Codex Flateyensis, taken from the Antiquitates Americanae. It is a part 
of the Saga of Eirek (Eric) the Red, probably a copy from an earlier 
manuscript, and, as Mr. Everett suggests, first committed to writing in 
Greenland within two or three generations after the time of the persons 
whose deeds are narrated. 




Yl«I IfiEttftn- I 



v-t 49 -■• 



»8* 



<i dr jsui bun 'ihrtr ftr^B tl^Gs 




The following page is a heliotype fac-simile from the manuscript of the 
Codex Flateyensis, taken from the,Antiquitates Americanae. It is a part 
of the Sag;' Zric) the Red, probably a copy from an earlier 

litted to wriu 



drl^uAtJ mftUwl&ift buo^tr xicnn> lumavftt }T*> m<UArv 

$HA At &t£u£tr6tt «m at: natuetrthi * jrmceUr fefib&r cii 

er # tt^w notirlttt^ftpte- t> cc mA alid' ^ tf pamAtrrt 

jm^iMeffit Alfeipdte- est am &<Etd ttwHa twtM^ar ofe 

If mint At Bttme. taU ^ |><> nulnl At |>u» fca kAw&r E*ftti¥ 

mo e^ leifcAtiflmrf ttcptu^ S ^ ft ctvmfr 5*? mcenr- e3T 

^a^^ttMT^^mt*\itnc^A ^ tmt^tra Aria* man ft cfedato W 

I 'cdom wittdft^CtietfW^Qap V ttten fttttid^Vlottt ArfTtr yfte 

1~ fctr u vd&kv e&j um timir' ttap ^ aWlnA at to^Wpni'i 
Ktt^/n<re&tn t pedtr Ictr-tj lagJrajmii p&^k^laiam.^V 
nfttt watrf? ujj t ^t*e\fis m^U pe - Wapt» etrt stanat man & 
jjjleoltndtfi finu itetpa^Tj^fuatnibi en umiu4 diiAva^epA 
* S ^ttt52>»mb»r £ 9 &i* S 1 t£i 1 otto &> FtU nokfemrf $l£ 

%tta^nt*tardr At Wtme ^*W £ 60 vtft 
^>ff *f ^"t^ Aptmfc aeiF^£ totf ^ f» ^ 

^ /C^x / i » a W ~, 'if 1 ,. • • — '*' T~» 

^>®&>^ 2* Wit tn V'Ott hftpA TMMj^uti c t|ti 
* dtfegtA &p U mtftT^tteVn At* ^ noi&ut AtnoA 
e' gVt&r Vur^ viiAfe? A *^ -ot t jjntnte t> finrorept 

lgf& 6$ bt*&&^& p« &pm& injtmtd ljtulpCum ^kctjpte 
J flap £t Jm * £d> til IjaterA Itta ftr]^v halpir^iojar t% 
;a J| ind fBmAe&cr lad s$f|?ofcur <en>. At F tnar lmi ^ -oil ms 

ine> cewtAwfefc Ijett^ nn^ftn faietm-)*& uA £ni{jir falls? 

?r kaetzflrtitmA ttiepA v noteanllw ? ^ IbqbJ/IS en ttiau 
1 Wrt^ Ijetll dinrA Att V ptdu 2r|affil let cew eptltr^ uii? Vi 

ettiiA |id e ptr dm Arjitti Iwn'^'o ]^a Odntr At|Ta f-lfeiplti 




.1 



'V : l 



o^ 



Of & p&cje fKon\ t^ c)^q?x of 
(ope/; ^LATETE^S]^ — 



SAGA OF EIREK THE RED. 



THERE was a man named Thorvald, of goodly lineage. Thorvald 
and his son Eirek, surnamed the Red, were compelled to fly from 
Jadar, on the southwest of Norway, on account of a homicide committed 
by them. They settled in Iceland, at that time thoroughly colonized. 
The father of Eirek soon died, but Eirek seemed to have inherited some 
portion of his spirit, for he got into quarrels with his Icelandic neighbors, 
of which homicide was again the consequence ; though the last quarrel 
seems to have originated in an injury unjustly inflicted upon him. Having 
been condemned by the court, proceeds the narrative, he fitted out a ves- 
sel. When all was ready, those who had been the partisans of Eirek in the 
recent quarrel accompanied him to some distance. Eirek informed them 
that he had determined to seek the land which Gunnbiorn had seen when, 
driven into the western ocean, he had found the islands thence called the 
rocks of Gunnbiorn. — saying that if he found land there, he would revisit 
his friends. He set sail from Snaefellsjokul, a mountain on the western 
coast of Iceland. At length he found land, and called the place Midjokul. 
Thence he coasted along the shore in a southerly direction, in order to 
observe whether the land were habitable. He passed the first winter in 
Eirek'sce (Eirek's Island) , near the middle of Eastbygd (eastern habitable 
tract). In the following spring Eirek entered Eireksfiord (Eirek's creek 
or inlet), and there fixed his residence. During the summer of the same 
year he explored the western part of the country, imposing names on vari- 
ous places. He passed the following winter also in this land, but in the 
third summer he returned to Iceland. 'He called the land which he had 
thus discovered, Greenland, saying that men would be induced to emigrate 
thither by a name so inviting. 

This event happened fifteen winters before the Christian religion was 
established in Iceland. 1 

1 It is well known that the Christian religion was established, through the efforts 
of Olaf, King of Norway, in the year iooo. The emigration to Greenland, therefore, 
took place in the year 985, and the discovery of the country by Eirek, three years 



90 

Heriulf had a wife named Thorgerd and a son named Biarni, a youth 
of great promise. This young man was seized with a great desire to 
travel, and was successful in obtaining both fortune and honor. He passed 
the winters alternately abroad and at home with his father. Biarni had 
recently fitted out a merchant-vessel, and had spent the last winter in 
Norway. During his absence it was that Heriulf had passed over, with 
his whole household, in company with Eirek, to Greenland. In the same 
ship with Heriulf was a Christian from the Hebrides. 

Heriulf fixed his residence at Heriulf-ness ; he was a man of great 
authority. Eirek the Red fixed his seat at Brattahlid. 

In all this region, Eirek possessed chief authority. All were subject 
to his will. There were his children, Leif, Thorvald, and Thorstein ; he 
had also a daughter named Freydis. She was married to a man named 
Thorvard, and they lived at Gardar, which became subsequently the 
Episcopal seat. She was overbearing, Thorvard weak-minded; she mar- 
ried him for the sake of his money. 



EXPEDITION OF BIARNI. 

Biarni during the summer arrived at the port of Eyrar (southwest of 
Iceland), his father having just before left the island. Biarni, somewhat 
troubled, was unwilling to disembark. When the sailors inquired what 
course he intended to pursue, he replied, " To do as I have been accus- 
tomed, and spend the winter with my father. I wish, therefore, to pro- 
ceed to Greenland, if you are willing to accompany me thither." All 
professed their willingness to accede to his desires. Then said Biarni, 
"Our course seems somewhat foolish, when none among us has ever 
crossed the Greenland ocean." Nevertheless, they put out to sea when 
they had refitted their vessel. They made sail for three days until they 
were out of sight of land. The fair wind then fell, and strong northeasterly 
winds sprang up accompanied by thick fogs. They were borne before the 
wind for many days, they knew not whither. At length, the light of day 
being once more visible, they were able to discern the face of heaven. 
They sailed one day further before they saw land. As they discussed what 

earlier, — namely, 982. The names of many persons are recorded who accompanied 
Eirek the Red to Greenland, and fixed their habitation there; out of twenty-five 
ships which accompanied him, only fourteen reached Greenland, the rest being lost 
or driven back to Iceland. Among those which reached Greenland, the ship of 
Heriulf, the father of Biarni Heriulfson, was one. Heriulf was kinsman to Ingolf, 
the first settler in Iceland. 



9i 

land it was that they then saw, Biarni said that he thought it could not 
be Greenland. They asked him whether he would wish to make for land 
or not. "My advice is," said he, "that we approach nearer the land." 
They did so, and presently perceived that the land was not mountainous, 
but covered with wood, and had rising ground in many parts. Leaving 
the land on the left hand, — or the larboard, if you like, — they put the 
ship about, with the stern towards land. Then they sailed two days before 
they saw land again. They asked Biarni whether he thought that this 
was Greenland. He said that he did not think that this was Greenland 
any more than the former land, " for they told me," said he, " that there 
are great mountains of ice in Greenland." Presently, drawing nearer, they 
perceived that this land was low and level, and overgrown with wood. 
Then the fair wind falling, the sailors said that they should like to land. 
Biarni would not permit it. 

They urged that there was a want of wood and water. " You need 
neither of these," said Biarni ; hence arose, however, some complaint 
on the part of the sailors. At length they hoisted sail, and turning their 
prow from land, they stood out again to sea; and having sailed three days 
with a southwest wind, they saw land the third time. This land was high 
and mountainous, and covered with ice. They asked Biarni whether he 
wished to land here. He said no; "for this land appears to me little 
inviting." Without relaxing sail, therefore, they coasted along the shore 
till they perceived that this was an island. They then put the ship about 
with the stern towards land, and stood out again to sea with the same 
wind, which blowing up very strong, Biarni desired his men to shorten sail, 
forbidding them to carry more sail than with such a heavy wind would be 
safe. When they had thus sailed four days, they saw land the fourth time. 
Then they asked Biarni whether he thought that this was Greenland, or 
not. He answered, " This, indeed, corresponds to the description which 
was given me of Greenland. Let us make for land." They did so, and 
approached toward evening a certain promontory. It was on this very 
promontory that Heriulf, the father of Biarni, dwelt. Then Biarni betook 
himself to his father's house, and having relinquished a seafaring life, he 
remained with his father as long as he lived, and after his death took 
possession of his estate. 



EXPEDITION OF LEIF ERICSEN. 

Leif, the son of Eirek, had an interview with Biarni Heriulfson, and 
bought of him his ship, which he fitted out and manned with thirty-five 
men. Fourteen years after Eirek the Red had gone to Greenland [that 



9 2 

is, a.d. 999] Leif his eldest son went to Norway, where he was hospitably 
entertained by King Olaf. The king was a zealous Christian, and exhorted 
him, as he did all pagans who came to him, to embrace Christianity. To 
which request Leif consented without any difficulty : and he and all his 
sailors were baptized. 

Leif reached Greenland with his ship and crew, and projected the ex- 
pedition to the land Biarni had seen. He requested his father Eirek to 
become the leader of the expedition. Eirek excused himself on the score 
of his advanced age, saying that he could ill bear the fatigues and dangers 
of the voyage. Leif urged that the constant good fortune of his family 
would attend him. Eirek yielded to this appeal, and, when all was ready, 
rode down on horseback to the vessel, which lay at but a short distance 
from his residence. The horse on which Eirek rode stumbled, — whereby 
Eirek was thrown, and injured his foot. Then he said, " Fortune will not 
permit me to discover more lands than this which we inhabit ; I will pro- 
ceed no further with you." Eirek then returned home to Brattahlid. 
Leif, with his thirty-five companions, went on board. Among them was 
a man from the south country [that is, a German] named Tyrker [Dr. 
Kohl says Biarni accompanied him, which is probably an error]. 

All being now ready, they set sail, and the first land to which they came 
was that last seen by Biarni. 

They made direct for land, cast anchor, and put out a boat. Having 
landed, they found no herbage. All above were frozen heights ; and the 
whole space between these and the sea was occupied by bare flat rocks ; 
whence they judged this to be a barren land. Then said Leif, " We will 
not do as Biarni did, who never set foot on shore : I will give a name to this 
land, and will call it ' Helluland ' " [that is, land of broad stones'] . After 
this they put out to sea, and came to another land. They approached the 
shore, and having cast anchor, put out a boat, and set foot ashore. This 
land was low and level, and covered with wood. In many places where 
they explored there were white sands, with a gradual rise of the shore. 
Then said Leif, " This land shall take its name from that which most 
abounds here. It shall be called 'Markland'" [that is, land of woods']. 
Then they re-embarked as quickly as possible. They put out to sea, 
and sailed for two days, with a northeast wind, till they again came in 
sight of land ; approaching which, they touched upon an island lying op- 
posite to the northeasterly part of the main land. Here they landed, and 
found the air remarkably pleasant. They observed the grass covered with 
much dew. When they touched this accidentally, and raised the hand 
to the mouth, they perceived a sweetness which they had not before 
noticed. [Possibly in the sense of refreshingly pure, — sweet water.] 



93 

Returning to their ship, they sailed through a bay which lay between the 
island and a promontory running towards the northeast, and directing 
their course westward, they passed beyond this promontory. In this bay, 
when the tide was low, there were shallows left of very great extent. 

So great was the desire of the men to land that, without waiting for the 
high tide to carry them nearer, they went ashore, at a place where a river 
poured out of a lake. When the tide rose, they took their boat and rowed 
back to the ship, and passed first up the river, and then into the lake. 
Having cast anchor they disembarked, and erected temporary habitations. 
Having subsequently determined, however, to remain here during the 
winter, they built more permanent dwellings. Both in the river and in the 
lake, there was a great abundance of salmon, and of greater size than they 
had before seen. 

So great was the goodness of the land that they conceived that cattle 
would be able to find provender in winter, none of that intense cold 
occurring to which they were accustomed in their own country, and the 
grass not withering very much. 

The quality in the length of the days was greater there than in Green- 
land or Iceland. On the shortest day the sun remained above the horizon 
from half-past seven in the morning till half-past four in the afternoon. 1 

Their dwellings completed, Leif said to his companions : " I propose 
that our numbers be divided into two companies, for I wish to explore the 
country ; each one of these companies shall, alternately, remain at home, 
and go out exploring. Let the exploring party, however, never go further 
than that they may return home the same evening ; neither let them sepa- 
rate one from another." It was so arranged. Leif himself, on alternate 
days, went out exploring and remained at home. Leif was a man strong 
and of great stature, of dignified aspect, wise and moderate in all tilings. 

It happened one evening that one of the company was missing. This 
was Tyrker the German. Leif felt much concerned, for Tyrker had lived 
with him and his father for a long time, and had been very fond of Leif in 
his childhood ; wherefore Leif severely blamed his comrades, and went 
himself, with twelve others, to seek the man. When they had gone but a 
short distance from the dwelling Tyrker met them, to their no small joy. 
Leif soon perceived that Tyrker had not his usual manner. He was 
(naturally) erect in countenance, his eyes constantly rolling, his face hol- 
low, his stature short, his body spare, and he was possessed of great skill 
in every kind of smith's work. Then said Leif to him, " Why have you 
stayed out so late, friend, and separated yourself from your companions? " 
For some time Tyrker gave no answer, except in German, and rolled his 
1 See Appendix B. 



94 

eyes (as usual) here and there, and twisted his mouth. They could not 
understand what he said. After some time he spoke in the Norse lan- 
guage, and said, " I have not been much further, but I have something new 
to tell you ; I have found vines and grapes." " Is this true?" asked Leif. 
"Yes, indeed, it is," answered he; "I was brought up in a land where 
there was abundance of vines and grapes." 

" There are two matters now to be attended to, on alternate days, — to 
gather grapes, or (as a means of saving time and trouble) cut down vines, 
and to fell timber with which we may load the ship." The task was 
immediately commenced. It is said that their long boat was filled with 
grapes. And now, having felled timber to load their ship, and the spring 
coming on, they made all ready for their departure [a. d. iooi] . Leif gave 
the land a name expressive of its good produce, and called it " Vinland " 
\land of wine]. They then put out to sea, having a fair wind, and, at 
length, came within sight of Greenland and her icy mountains. As they 
approached, one of the men asked Leif, " Why do you steer the ship to 
that quarter, directly in the teeth of the wind?" Leif answered, " I guide 
the helm, and look out at the same time ; tell me if you see anything." All 
denied that they saw anything at all of particular importance. " I am not 
sure," said Leif, " whether it is a ship or a rock which I see in the dis- 
tance." They all presently see it, and pronounce it to be a rock. Leif 
had so much sharper eyes than all the others, that he saw men upon the 
rock. " Now," said Leif, " I am desirous of striving even against the 
wind, so that we may reach those yonder ; perchance they may have need 
of our assistance, and their necessity calls upon us to render them our 
aid ; if they are hostile, there can be no danger, for they will be altogether 
in our power." They make for the rock, furl their sails, cast anchor, and 
put out the other small boat which they had carried with them. Then 
Tyrker demanded who was the captain of the band (on the rock). The 
captain answered that his name was Thorer, and that he was a Norwegian 
by birth. He then asked, "What is your name?" Leif gave his name. 
" Are you the son of Eirek the Red, of Brattahlid ? " Leif told him that 
he was. " I wish now," added Leif, " to offer you all a place in my ship, 
and to take also as much of your goods as my ship will carry." They 
accepted his offer. The vessel then sailed up Eireksfiord until they 
reached Brattahlid, where they disembarked. Then Leif offered to Thorer 
and his wife, and three of his men, to take up their residence with him. 
He showed hospitalities likewise to all the others, as well the sailors of 
Thorer as his own. There were fifteen men thus preserved by Leif, and 
from that time he was called " Leif the Lucky." 

This expedition contributed both to the wealth and honor of Leif. In 



95 

the following winter a disease attacked the company of Thorer, to which 
that man himself and many of his companions fell victims. Eirek the 
Red also died during that winter. 



EXPEDITION OF THORVALD. 

There was much talk, now, of the expedition of Leif ; and Thorvald, 
his brother, considered that the lands had been too little explored. 
Then said Leif to Thorvald, " Go, brother, take my ship to Vinland ; 
but first fetch away from the rock all that Thorer left there." Thorvald 
did so. 

Now Thorvald made preparations for this expedition under the author- 
ity of his brother Leif; taking with him thirty companions. They fitted 
out the ship, and put out to sea. Nothing is recorded concerning the 
events of the voyage before their arrival at Leifsbudir [or Leifsbooths, 
which was the name given to the dwellings erected by Leif] in Vinland, 
where, the ship being drawn ashore, they passed the winter [1002-3], 
supporting themselves by catching fish. 

In the ensuing spring Thorvald desired his men to make ready the 
ship, and selected some to go in the ship's boat along the western coast, 
and to explore it through the summer. The country seemed fair and 
woody, there being but little distance between the forests and the ocean, 
and much white sandy shore. There was a great number of islands and 
numerous shallows. 

They found no habitations of men or beasts there, except in an island 
far west, where they saw a single wooden shed. 1 They found nothing 
more of human workmanship, and in the autumn they returned to LeiPs 
booths. 

The next summer [being a. d. 1004], Thorvald with a portion of his 
company in the great ship coasted along the eastern shore, and passed 
round the land to the northward. They were then driven by a storm 
against a neck of land, and the ship was stranded ; the keel was damaged. 
Remaining here for some time, they repaired their ship. Then Thorvald 
said to his companions : " Now let us fix up the keel on this neck of land, 
and let us call the place ' Rialarness ' " [keel promontory]. 

Having done as he desired, they sailed along the coast, leaving that neck 

to the eastward, and entered the mouths of the neighboring bays, until they 

came to a certain promontory which was covered with wood. Here they 

cast anchor, and prepared to land ; and Thorvald and all his companions 

■ x Beamish sa3's, " a corn-shed of wood." 



9 6 

went on shore. Then said Thorvald : " This is a pleasant place, and here 
I should like to fix my habitation." 

They afterwards, having returned to their ship, perceived on the sandy 
shore of the bay, within the promontory, three elevations. They went 
towards them, and saw three small boats made of skins (that is, canoes), 
and under each three men. They seized all of these except one, who 
escaped with his canoe. They killed those whom they had taken. Having 
returned to the promontory, they looked round and saw in the inner bay 
several elevations, which they considered to be habitations. They were 
all afterwards overcome by such a heavy sleep that none of them were able 
to keep watch. After some time a loud shout was heard which roused 
them all ; and the words which roused them were these : " Awake, Thor- 
vald, and all thy company, if you wish to preserve your lives ; embark 
immediately, and make the best of your way from the land." x Then an 
innumerable multitude of canoes was seen approaching from the inner bay, 
by which Thorvald's party was immediately attacked. Then said Thor- 
vald : " Let us raise protections over the sides of the ship, and defend our- 
selves as well as we are able, though we can avail little against this multitude." 
So it was done. The Skraelings cast their weapons at them for some time, 
and then precipitously retired. Then Thorvald inquired what wounds his 
men had received. They denied that any of them had been at all wounded. 
" I have received a wound under my arm," said Thorvald, " with an arrow, 
which, flying between the ship's side and the edge of my shield, fastened 
itself in my armpit ; here is the arrow. This will cause my death. Now 
it is my advice that you prepare to return home as quickly as possible ; 
but me you shall carry to the promontory which seemed to me so pleasant 
a place to dwell in. Perhaps the words which fell from me shall prove 
true, and I shall indeed abide there for a season. There bury me, and 
place a cross at my head and another at my feet, and call that place forever 
more ' Krossa-ness ' " \_promotitory shaped like a cross]. At that time 
Greenland had been converted to Christianity [this being a. d. 1004, and 
Christianity having been introduced by Leif in 999, as we have seen]. 
Then Thorvald expired. Everything was done according to his direc- 
tions ; and those who had gone with him on this expedition, having joined 
their companions at Leifsbooths, informed them of all that had happened. 
They passed the following winter [the third, 1004-1005] there, and pre- 
pared quantities of grapes to carry home. Early in the following spring 
[1005] they set sail for Greenland, and arrived safely in Eireksfiord, 
having much melancholy intelligence to convey to Leif. 

1 Was the speaker one of Leif's men, left behind, whom the Skraelings had 
adopted ? 



97 



SAGA OF THORFINN. 

The Thorfinn Saga has perplexed every one, including 
the original scribe, who has attempted to adjust its parts 
in harmonious arrangement. It contains repetitions, has 
been subjected to transpositions, and seems the result of 
an effort to record all which could be regarded as true in 
the Saga, rather than of an intelligent comprehension 
of the order in which the sentences should be set down. 
The Saga itself bears witness to the confusion of the 
scribe. He says : " Now came they back to Straumfjord. 
... It is some men's say that Bjarni and Gudrid remained 
behind and a hundred men with them, and did not go 
further ; but that Karlsefni and Snorri (Grimalson) went 
southwards, and forty men with them, and were not 
longer in Hop than barely two months, and the same 
summer came back." (Beamish.) 

This passage is cited to show that there was perplexity 
in the mind of the ancient recorder, and because it con- 
tains a most important key to the other parts of the 
narration. It is obvious to a careful reader that the 
Thorfinn Saga as a whole is a collection, as if from 
separate pieces of parchment, of brief relations by sev- 
eral different persons touching the events of more than 
one expedition, each relation true in itself, but the whole 
strung together with imperfect regard to proper sequence. 
Here follows Smith's version : — 

Thorfinn occupied his time in mercantile expeditions, and was es- 
teemed a skilful merchant. . . . 



9 8 

Thorfinn Karlsefni married Gudrid, and their nuptials were celebrated 
at Brattahlid during the same winter [ioo6-7]. x 

The conversation frequently turned, at Brattahlid, on the discovery of 
Vinland the Good, many saying that an expedition there held out a fair 
prospect of gain. 

At length Thorfinn and Snorri made preparations for going on the 
expedition thither in the following spring. Biarni Grimolfson and 
Thorhall Gamlason, already mentioned, determined to accompany 
them. Thorvard, the husband of Freydis the daughter of Eirek, went 
with them, as did Thorvald Erickson. 

An expedition was at length fitted out, consisting of three ships, with 
one hundred and sixty souls, of whom seven were women, and besides, 
little ships and the equipment for a colony. They took with them all 
kinds of live-stock, for they designed to colonize the land. Thorfinn 
asked Leif to give him the dwellings which he had erected in Vinland. 
Leif told him that he would grant him the use of them, but that he could 
not give them to him. 2 

Then they sailed to Westbygd, and thence to Bjarney ; thence they 
sailed for two days toward the south. Land being seen they put out a 
boat and explored. They found vast flat stones, many of which were 
twelve ells broad. There was a great number of foxes there. 

They called that land " Helluland." Thence they sailed two days in a 
southerly course, and came to a land covered with wood, and in which 
were many wild animals. Beyond this land to the southeast lay an 
island on which they killed a bear. They called the island " Bjarney " 
(Sable Island ?), and the land " Markland." 

Thence they sailed toward the south for two days, and arrived at a 
ness, or promontory of land. They sailed along the shores of this 
promontory, the land lying to the starboard. These shores were exten- 
sive and sandy. They made for land, and found on the ness the keel 
of a ship, wherefore they called the place " Kialarness." And they 
called the shores " Furdustrandir," because the coasting along them 
seemed tiresome. 8 

1 The date is ascertained from the circumstance of its being mentioned in the " ac- 
count of Eirek," etc., that Thorfinn and his companions arrived in Greenland in the 
summer of the same year as that in which Gudrid returned to Brattahlid after the 
death of Thorstein. 

2 Then they bore out to sea with the ship, and came to Leifs booths, hale and whole, 
and landed there their cattle. — Graenlendinga Thatt. (J. Eliot Cabot, Mass. Quarterly 
Review, March, 1849). 

3 It seems possible that the expedition turned away at once from Kjalarness to 
Leif 's houses. 



99 

They afterwards came to a bay and directed the course of their ves- 
sels into this bay. 

King Olaf Tryggvason [the same whom we saw that Leif visited] had 
given to Leif two Scots, a man named Haki and a woman named 
Hekia ; they were swifter of foot than wild animals. These Leif had 
given to Thorfinn, and they were then in his ship. When they had 
passed beyond Furdustrandir he put these Scots on shore, directing 
them to run over the country toward the southwest for three days, and 
then return. They were very lightly clad. The ships lay to during 
their absence. When they returned one carried in his hand a bunch of 
grapes, the other an ear of corn [a new sowen ear of wheat. Beamish], 
They went on board, and then the ships proceeded on their course 
until the land was intersected by another bay. 

Outward from this bay lay an island, on each side of which there 
was a very rapid current. They named this island " Straumey" [isle of 
currents]. There was so great a number of eider ducks there that they 
could hardly walk without treading on the eggs. [Monomoy ? ] 

They directed their course into this bay and called it " Straumfiord." 
Here they disembarked, and made preparations for remaining. They 
had carried out with them every kind of cattle, and found abundance of 
pasturage. The situation of this place was pleasant. They occupied 
their time chiefly in exploring the land. Here they passed the 
winter [1007-8]. 

That winter was very severe, and as they had no stores provided, 
provisions ran short, for they could neither hunt nor fish. So they 
passed over into the island, hoping that they might there find the means 
of subsistence, either in what they could catch or what should be cast 
ashore. They found, however, little better means of subsistence there 
than before, though the cattle were somewhat better off. Then they 
prayed to God that he would send them food ; which prayer was not 
answered as soon as they desired. 

About this time Thorhall was missing, and they went out to seek for 
him. Their search lasted for three days. On the morning of the fourth 
day Thorfinn and Biarni Grimolfson found him lying on the top of a 
rock. There he lay stretched out, with his eyes open, blowing through 
his mouth and nose, and mumbling to himself. They asked him why 
he had gone there. He answered that it was no business of theirs ; 
that he was old enough to take care of himself without their troubling 
themselves with his affairs. They asked him to return home with them, 
which he did. 

A short time after a whale was cast ashore, and they all ran down 



eagerly to cut it up, but none knew what kind of a whale it was. 
Neither did Thorfinn, though well acquainted with whales, know this 
one. The cooks dressed the whale and they all eat of it, but were 
all taken ill* immediately afterwards. Then said Thorhall : " Now you 
see that Thor is more ready to give aid than your Christ. This food is 
the reward of a hymn which I composed to Thor, my god, who has 
rarely forsaken me." When they heard this none would eat any more ; 
and so they threw all the remainder of the flesh from the rocks, com- 
mending themselves to God. After which the air became milder ; they 
were again able to go fishing ; nor from that time was there any want 
of provisions, for there were abundance of wild animals hunted on the 
mainland, of eggs taken on the island, and of fish caught in the 
sea. 

And now they began to dispute as to where they should next go. Thor- 
hall, the hunter, wished to go north, round Furdustrandir and Kialar- 
ness, and so to explore Vinland. Thorfinn wished to coast along the 
shore toward the southwest, considering it as probable that there 
would be a more extensive tract of country the further south they went. 
It was thought more advisable that each should explore separately. 
Thorhall, therefore, made preparations on the island, his whole com- 
pany consisting of nine only ; all the others accompanied Thorfinn. 

One day, as Thorhall was carrying water to his ship, he drank, and 
sang these verses : — 

" I left the shores of Eireksfiord 
To seek, O cursed Vinland, thine; 
Each warrior pledging there his word 
That we should here quaff choicest wine. 
Great Odin, Warrior God, see how 
These water-pails I carry now ; 
No wine my lips have touched, but low 
At humblest fountain I must bow." 

When all was ready and they were about to set sail Thorhall sang : 

" Now home our joyful course we '11 take, 
Where friends untroubled winters lead : 
Now let our vessel swiftly make 
Her channel o'er the ocean's bed ; 
And let the battle-loving crew 
Who here rejoice and praise the land — 
Let them catch whales, and eat them too, 
And let them dwell in Furdustrand." 



Thorhall's party then sailed northward, round Furdustrandir and 
Kialarness. But when they desired to sail thence westward, they were 
met by an adverse tempest and driven off on to the coast of Ireland, 
and there were beaten and made slaves. And there, as the merchants 
reported, Thorhall died. 

Thorfinn, 1 with Snorri Thorbrandson, and Biarni Grimolfson, and all 
the rest of the company, sailed toward the southwest. They went on 
for some time until they came to a river which, flowing from land, 
passed through a lake into the sea. They found sandy shoals there, so 
that they could not pass up the river except at high tide. [It was very 
shallow, and one could not enter the river without high water. B.] 

Thorfinn and his companions sailed up as far as the mouth of the 
river, and called the place " H6p." 

Having landed, they observed that where the land was low corn grew 
wild ; where it rose higher vines were found ; there were self-sown fields 
of wheat. Every river was full of fish. They dug pits in the sand 
where the tide rose highest, and at low tide there remained sacred fish 
in these pits. In the forest there were a great number of wild beasts of 
all kinds. 

They passed half a month here [there, B.], carelessly, having brought 
with them their cattle [and amused themselves and did not perceive anything 
new. B.]. One morning as they were looking round they saw a great 
number of canoes, in which poles were carried. These poles, vibrating 
in the direction of the sun, emitted a sound like reeds shaken by the 
wind. Then said Thorfinn, " What do you think this means ? " Snorri 
Thorbrandson answered, " Perhaps it is a sign of peace ; let us take a 
white shield and hild out toward them." They did so. Then those 
in the canoes rowed toward them, seeming to wonder who they were, 
and landed. They were swarthy in complexion, short and savage in 
appearance, with ugly hair, great eyes, and broad cheeks. When they 
had stayed some time, and gazed at the strangers in astonishment, they 
departed and retired beyond the promontory to the southwest. 

Thorfinn and his companions erected dwellings at a little distance 
from the lake ; some nearer, others had made theirs further off. [Some 
of the houses were near the water, others further off. B.] They passed 
the winter here. No snow fell, and all their cattle lived unhoused. 

One morning in the following spring they saw a great number of 
canoes approaching from beyond the promontory at the southwest. 

They were in such great numbers that the whole water looked as if it 

1 This appears to be the beginning of a separate and original account of the 
voyage out from Greenland. 



102 

were sprinkled with cinders. Poles were, as before, suspended in each 
canoe. Thorfinn and his party held out shields, after which a barter of 
goods commenced between them. These people desired above all 
things to obtain some red cloth, in exchange for which they offered 
various kinds of skins, some perfectly gray. They were anxious also to 
purchase swords and spears, but this Thorfinn and Snorri forbade. 
For a narrow strip of red cloth they gave a whole skin, and tied the 
cloth round their heads. Thus they went on bartering for some time. 
When the supply of cloth began to run short, Thorfinn's people cut 
it into pieces so small that they did not exceed a finger's breadth ; 
and yet the Skraelings gave for them as much as or even more than 
before. 

It happened that a bull, which Thorfinn had brought with him, rush- 
ing from the woods, bellowed lustily just as this traffic was going on. 
The Skraelings were terribly alarmed at this, and running down quickly 
to their canoes, rowed back toward the southwest ; from which time 
they were not seen for three weeks. At the end of that time a vast 
number of the canoes of the Skraelings was seen coming from the 
southwest. All their poles were on this occasion turned opposite to 
the sun, and they all howled fearfully. Thorfinn's party raised the red 
shield. The Skraelings landed and a battle followed. There was a 
galling discharge of weapons, for the Skraelings used slings. Thor- 
finn's party saw the Skraelings raise on a long pole a large globe, not 
unlike a sheep's belly, and almost of a blue color. They hurled this 
from the pole toward the party of Thorfinn, and as it fell it made a 
great noise. The sight of this excited great alarm among the followers 
of Thorfinn, so that they began immediately to fly along the course of 
the river, for they imagined themselves to be surrounded on all sides by 
the Skraelings. They did not halt till they reached some rocks, where 
they turned about and fought valiantly. Freydis going out (of the 
dwellings) and seeing the followers of Thorfinn flying, exclaimed, 
" Why do strong men like you run from such weak wretches, whom you 
ought to destroy like cattle? If I were armed, I believe that I should 
fight more bravely than any of you." They regarded not her words. 
Freydis endeavored to keep up with them, but was unable to do so, 
owing to the state of her health, — yet she followed them as far as the 
neighboring wood. The Skraelings pursued her. She saw a man lying 
dead. This was Thorbrand, the son of Snorri, in whose head a flat 
stone was sticking. His sword lay naked by his side. This she seized 
and prepared to defend herself. The Skraelings came up with her. 
She struck her breast with the naked sword, which so astonished the 



103 

Skraelings that they fled back to their canoes and rode off as fast as ' 
possible. 

The followers of Thorfinn coming up to her extolled her courage. 
Two of their number fell, together with a vast number of the 
Skraelings. 

Then the followers of Thorfinn, having been so hard pressed by the 
mere numbers of the enemy, returned home and dressed their wounds. 
Considering how great had been the multitude which had attacked 
them, they perceived that those who had come up from the canoes could 
have been only a single band, — that the remainder and greater part 
must have come upon them from ambush. 

The Skraelings (in the course of the battle) found a dead man, 
and a battle-axe lying near him. One of them took up the axe and 
cut wood with it ; then one after the other did the same, thinking it 
an instrument of great value, and very sharp. Presently one of 
them took it and struck it against a stone, so that the axe broke. 
Finding that it would not cut stone, they thought it useless and threw 
it away. 

Thorfinn and his companions now thought it obvious that, although 
the quality of the land was excellent, yet there would always be danger 
to be apprehended from the natives. They therefore prepared to de- 
part and to return to their native country. They first sailed round the 
land to the northward. They took near the shore five Skraelings 
clothed in skins and sleeping ; these had with them boxes containing 
marrow mixed with blood. Thorfinn presumed them to have been ex- 
iled from the country. His people killed them. They afterwards came 
to a promontory abounding in wild animals, as they judged from the 
marks found in the sand. 

They then went again to Straumfiord, where there were abundant 
supplies of all that they needed {and there was abundance of everything 
that they wanted to have. B.]. 

Some say that Biarni and Gudrid remained here with one hundred 
men and that they never went any farther ; that Thorfinn and Snorri 
went toward the southwest with forty men, and that they remained no 
longer at H6p than barely two months, returning the same summer 
{and the same summer came back. B.]. 

Afterwards Thorfinn went with one ship to seek Thorhall the Hunter, 
the rest remaining behind. Sailing northward round Kialarness they 
went westward after passing that promontory, the land lying to their 
left hand [larboard]. There they saw extended forests. When they 
had sailed for some time they came to a place where a river flowed 



104 

from southeast to northwest. Having entered its mouth they cast 
anchor on the southwestern bank. 

One morning the followers of Thorfinn saw in an open place in the 
wood something at a distance which glittered. When they shouted it 
moved. This was a uniped, who immediately betook himself to the 
bank of the river where the ship lay. Thorvald Eirekson was sitting 
near the helm. The uniped shot an arrow at him. Thorvald, having 
extracted the arrow said : "We have found a rich land but shall enjoy 
it little." After a short time Thorvald died of the wound. The uniped 
subsequently retired. Thorfinn's crew pursued him. They presently 
saw him run into a neighboring creek. Then they returned and one of 
them sang these verses : — 

" Pursue we did, — 
'T is true, no more, — 
The uniped 
Down to the shore. 

The wondrous man 
His course quite clear 
Through ocean ran ! 
Hear 1 Thorfinn, hear I " 

Then, having returned, they sailed towards the south {they drew off 
then, and to the northward. B.] ; for imagining that this was the land of 
the unipeds, they were unwilling to expose themselves to danger any 
longer. They concluded that the hills which were in Hop were the 
same as those which they here saw \_and it also appeared to be equal 
length from Straumfiord to both places. B.]. 

They passed the winter in Straumfiord. Snorri Thorfinnson had been 
born during the first autumn, and was in his third year when they left 
Vinland. 

Setting sail from Vinland [in the spring of ioio] with a southerly 
wind, they touched at Markland and found there five Skraelings, of 
whom one was a grown man, two were women, and two boys. Thor- 
finn's party seized the boys, the others escaping and hiding them- 
selves in caves. x They took these two boys with them, taught them 
their language, and baptized them. The boys called their mother 
Vethilldi and their father Uvaege. They said that chiefs ruled over 
the Skraelings, of whom one was named Avalldania, the other Valldidda ; 
that they had no houses, but lived in caverns and the hollows of rocks ; 
that beyond their country was another, the inhabitants of which were 
clothed in white, and carried before them long poles with flags, and 



shouted with a loud voice. It was thought that this must be Huitra- 
mannaland, or Irland it Mikla. 

They afterwards reached Eireksfiord in Greenland. . . . 



FROM JAMES ELIOT CABOT'S " DISCOVERY OF AMERICA BY 
THE NORTHMEN." 

[In the Massachusetts Quarterly Review, 1849] 

The following translations are taken from the Thattir 1 
Eirek' s Rauda and the Graenlendinga Thdtt. (" the piece 
about Eirek the Red," and " the piece about the Green- 
landers "), which are presented here nearly entire. These 
pieces are fragments which have been interpolated into 
a Life of King Olaf Tryggvason. The manuscripts are 
of the end of the fourteenth century (1387—1395), but 
the style and other evidences show them to be copies 
from much older ones. 

It seems that among a large number of Icelanders who 
accompanied Eirek the Red (who was the first to make a 
voyage to Greenland, after its discovery by Gunnbiorn) 
was one Herjulf, whose son Biarni — a merchant — had 
been in the habit of passing every other winter at 
home with his father, and then sailing again on distant 
voyages. 

That same summer [985 or] 986 came Biarni with his ship to Eyrar, 
in the spring of which his father had sailed from the island. These 
tidings seemed to Biarni weighty, and he would not unload his ship. 
Then asked his sailors what he meant to do. He answered that he 
meant to hold to his wont, and winter with his father, " and I will bear 
for Greenland if you will follow me thither." All said they would do as 

1 Small stories. 



io6 

he wished. Then said Biarni, " Imprudent they will think our voyage, 
since none of us has been in the Greenland Sea." 

Yet they bore out to sea as soon as they were boun, 1 and sailed 
three days till the land was sunk ; then the fair wind fell off and there 
arose north winds and fogs, and they knew not whither they fared ; and 
so it went for many days. After that they saw the sun, and could then 
get their bearings. Then they hoisted sail and sailed that day before 
they saw land ; and they counselled with themselves what land that 
might be. Biarni said he thought it could not be Greenland. They 
asked him whether they would sail to the land or not. " This is my 
counsel, to sail nigh to the land" (said he); and so they did, and soon 
saw that the land was without fells, and wooded, and small heights on 
the land ; and they left the land to larboard, and let the foot of the sail 
look towards land. 2 After that they sailed two days before they saw 
another land. They asked if Biarni thought this was Greenland. He 
said he thought it no more Greenland than the first; "for the glaciers 
are very huge, as they say, in Greenland." They soon neared the land, 
and saw it was flat land and overgrown with wood. Then the fair wind 
fell. Then the sailors said that it seemed prudent to them to land there; 
but Biarni would not. They thought they needed both wood and water. 
" Of neither are you in want," said Biarni; but he got some hard speeches 
for that from his sailors. He bade them hoist sail, and so they did; and 
they turned the bows from the land, and sailed out to sea with a west- 
southwest wind three days, and saw a third land ; but that land was 
high, mountainous, and covered with glaciers. They asked then if Biarni 
would put ashore there, but he said he would not ; "for this land seems 
to me not very promising." They did not lower their sails, but held on 
along this land, and saw that it was an island ; but they turned the 
stern to the land, and sailed seawards with the same fair wind. But the 
wind rose, and Biarni bade them shorten sail and not to carry more 
than their ship and tackle would bear. They sailed now four days, 
then saw they land the fourth. Then they asked Biarni whether he 
thought that was Greenland or not. Biarni answered, " That is likest to 
what is said to me of Greenland, and we will put ashore." So they did, 
and landed under a certain ness [cape] at evening of the day. And 
there was a boat at the ness ; and there lived Herjulf, the father of 
Biarni, on this ness ; and from him has the ness taken its name, and is 
since called ' Herjulf sness.' Now fared Biarni to his father, and gave 
up sailing, and was with his father whilst Herjulf lived, and afterwards 
lived there after his father." 

1 Or bound (l/tlnir) ; namely, ready, — as we say a ship is " bound " for London. 

2 Ok letu skaut horfa a land. 



107 

Eirek the Red, the leader of the colony, was still looked 
upon as its head; and Biarni once having paid him a 
visit, and being well received, the conversation fell upon 
his adventures and his discoveries of unknown lands. 
All thought Biarni had shown very little curiosity in not 
making further explorations. There was much talk about 
voyages of discovery ; and Leif, the eldest of Eirek's three 
sons, resolved to see this newly discovered country. Ac- 
cordingly he paid Biarni a visit, bought his vessel of him, 
and engaged a crew. 

He now endeavored to persuade his father to accom- 
pany him, and after some trouble succeeded. But the old 
man, on the way to the vessel, fell from his horse and in- 
jured his foot. Thereupon he said, " It is not fated that 
I should discover more countries than those we now in- 
habit, and we can now no longer fare all together." So 
he returned home ; but Leif with his companions, thirty- 
five in all, set sail. 

(a. d. 999.) First they found the land which Biarni had found 
last. Then sailed they to the land and cast anchor, and put off a 
boat and went ashore, and saw there no grass. Mickle glaciers were 
over all the higher parts j but it was like a plain of rock from the gla- 
ciers to the sea, and it seemed to them that the land was good for noth- 
ing. Then said Leif, " We have not done about this land like Biarni, 
not to go upon it ; now I will give a name to the land and call it ' Hel- 
luland'" \_flat-stone land\ Then they went to their ship. After that 
they sailed into the sea, and found another land ; sailed up to it and 
cast anchor, then put off a boat and went ashore. This land was flat 
and covered with wood and broad white sands wherever they went; and 
the shore was low. Then said Leif, " From its make shall a name be 
given to this land, and it shall be called ' Markland ' " \wood-land~\. Then 
they went quickly down to the vessel. Now they sailed thence into the 
sea with a northeast wind, and were out two days before they saw land ; 
and they sailed to land, and came to an island that lay north of the 



io8 

land ; and they went onto it and looked about them in good weather, 
and found that dew lay upon the grass ; and that happened that they 
put their hands in the dew and brought it to their mouths, and they 
thought they had never known anything so sweet as that was. 1 Then 
they went to their ship and sailed into that sound that lay between that 
island and a ness which went northward from the land, and then steered 
westward past the ness. There were great shoals at ebb-tide, and their 
vessel stood up, and it was far to see from the ship to the sea. But 
they were so curious to fare to the land that they could not bear to bide 
till the sea came under their ship, and ran ashore where a river flows 
out from a lake. But when the sea came under their ship, then took 
they the boat and rowed to the ship, and took it up into the river, and 
then into the lake, and there cast anchor, and bore from the ship their 
skin cots and made there booths. 

Afterwards they took counsel to stay there that winter, and made 
there great houses. There was no scarcity of salmon in the rivers and 
lakes, and larger salmon than they had before seen. There was the 
land so good, as it seemed to them, that no cattle would want fodder 
for the winter. There came no frost in the winter, and little did the 
grass fall off there. Day and night were more equal there than in 
Greenland or Iceland; the sun had there eyktarstad and dagmalastad 2 on 
the shortest day. But when they had ended their house-building, then 
said Leif to his companions, " Now let our company be divided into two 
parts, and the land kenned ; and one half of the people shall be at the 
house at home, but the other half shall ken the land, and fare not fur- 
ther than that they may come home at evening; and they shall not 
separate." Now so they did one time. Leif changed about, so that he 
went with them [one day] and [the next] was at home at the house. 
Leif was a mickle man and stout, most noble to see, a wise man and 
moderate in all things. 

Leif the Lucky Found Men on a Skerry at Sea. 

One evening it chanced that a man was wanting of their people, 
and this was Tyrker, the Southerner. 8 Leif took this very ill; for 

1 Probably the so-called honey-dew, — a sweet substance deposited on the plants 
by certain insects (aphides), which often attracts swarms of ants and flies to rose- 
bushes infested by them. (See last line of page 92.) 

2 Dagmalastad was half-past seven a.m., — the hour of sunrise in the south of Ice- 
land on the first day of winter (October 17). Eyktarstad was the period fixed (in 
the laws) as the end of the natural day; namely, half-past four p.m. — Antiqititates 
Americanae, p. 435. 

8 That is, the German. 



109 

Tyrker had been long" with his parents, and loved Leif much in his 
childhood. Leif now chid his people sharply, and made ready to fare 
forth to seek him, and twelve men with him. But when they had gone 
a little way, there came Tyrker to meet them, and was joyfully received. 
Leif found at once that his old friend was somewhat out of his mind ; 
he was bustling and unsteady-eyed, freckled in face, little and wizened 
in growth, but a man of skill in all art. Then said Leif to him, " Why 
wert thou so late, my fosterer, and separated from the party ? " He 
talked at first a long while in German, and rolled many ways his eyes 
and twisted his face; but they skilled not what he said. He said then 
in Norse after a time : "I went not very far, but I have great news to 
tell ; I have found grape-vines and grapes." " Can that be true, my fos- 
terer? " quoth Leif. " Surely it is true," quoth he, "for I was brought up 
where there is no want of grape-vines or grapes." Then they slept for 
the night, but in the morning Leif said to his sailors : " Now we shall 
have two jobs ; each day we will either gather grapes or new grape- 
vines, and fell trees, — so there will be a cargo for my ship ;" and that 
was the counsel taken. It is said that their long boat was filled with 
grapes. Now was hewn a cargo for the ship ; and when spring came 
they got ready and sailed off; and Leif gave a name to the land after 
its sort, and called it " Vinland " \_wine-land\ They sailed then after- 
wards into the sea, and had a fair wind until they saw Greenland and 
the fells under the glaciers. Then a man took the word, and said to 
Leif, " Why steerest thou the ship so close to the wind ? " Leif an- 
swered, " I look to my steering and to something more ; and what see ye 
remarkable ? " They said they saw nothing that seemed remarkable. 
" I know not," said Leif, " whether I see a ship or a rock." Now they 
looked, and said it was a rock. But he saw further than they, and saw 
men on the rock. " Now we must bite into the wind " \beitim undir ve- 
drit], said Leif, "so that we may near them if they are in need of our 
aid, and it is needful to help them ; but if so be it that they are not 
peaceably disposed, all the strength is on our side and not on theirs." 
Now they came close to the rock, and furled their sail and cast anchor, 
and put out another little boat which they had with them. Then asked 
Tyrker, Who rode before them [who was their leader] ? He said he 
was named Thorir, and that he was a Norseman of kin. " But what is 
thy name ? " Leif told his name. " Art thou son of Eirek the Red, of 
Brattahlid ? " said he. Leif said it was so. " Now will I," said Leif, "bid 
you all to my ship, and as many of the goods as the ship will carry." 
They were thankful for the chance, and sailed to Eireksfirth with the 
cargo until they Came to Brattahlid, and then unloaded the ship. After- 
wards Leif bade Thorir to stay with him, and also Gudrid his wife, and 



no 

three other men, and got lodgings for the other sailors , — both Thorir's 
and his own fellows. Leif took fifteen men from the rock. After that 
he was called Leif the Lucky. Leif was now both well to do and hon- 
ored. That winter there came a great sickness among Thorir's people, 
and carried off Thorir and many of his people. This winter died also 
Eirek the Red. 

Now there was a great talk about Leif's Vinland voyage ; and 
Thorvald, his brother, thought the land had been too little explored. 
Then said Leif to Thorvald, " Thou shalt go with my ship, brother, if 
thou wilt, to Vinland ; but I want that the ship should go first after the 
wood that Thorir had on the rock ; " and so was done. 

Thorvald Fares to Vinland. 

Now Thorvald made ready for this voyage with thirty men, with 
the counsel thereon of Leif, his brother. Then they fitted out their ship 
and bore out to sea [a.d. 1002]; and there is nothing told of their 
voyage before they came to Vinland to Leif's booths ; and they laid up 
their ship and dwelt in peace there that winter, and caught fish for their 
meat. But in the spring Thorvald said they would get ready their ship, 
and send their longboat and some men with it along to the westward of 
the land, and explore it during the summer. The land seemed to them 
fair and wooded, and narrow between the woods and the sea, and of 
white sand. There were many islands and great shoals. They found 
neither man's abode nor beasts ; 1 but on an island to the westward they 
found a corn-shed of wood. More works of men they found not ; and 
they went back, and came to Leif's booths in the fall. But the next 
summer fared Thorvald eastward with the merchant-ship, and coasted 
to the northward. Here a heavy storm arose as they were passing one 
of two capes, and drove them up there and broke the keel under the 
ship ; and they dwelt there long, and mended their ship. Then said 
Thorvald to his companions : " Now will I that we raise up here a keel 
on the ness, and call it ' Keelness; ' " and so they did. After that they 
sailed thence, and coasted to the eastward, and into the mouths of the 
firths that were nearest to them, and to a headland that stretched out. 
This was all covered with wood. Here they brought the ship into har- 
bor and shoved a bridge onto the land, and Thorvald went ashore with 
all his company. He said then, " Here it is fair, and here would I like 
to raise my dwellings." They went then to the ship, and saw upon the 
sands within the headland three heights ; and they went thither and 
1 Beamish says " neither dwellings of men or beasts." 



saw there three skin boats, and three men under each. Then they di- 
vided their people, and laid hands on them all, except one that got off 
with his boat. They killed these eight, and went then back to the 
headland and looked about them there, and saw in the firth some 
heights, and thought they were dwellings. After that there came a 
heaviness on them so great that they could not keep awake, and all 
slumbered. Then came a call above them so that they all awoke. 
Thus said the call: "Awake, Thorvald, and all thy company, if thou 
wilt keep thy life ; and fare thou to thy ship, and all thy men, and fare 
from the land of the quickest " [a cry, probably, from one of Leif's men 
who had identified himself with the Indians and did not return to 
Greenland]. Then came from within the firth innumerable skin boats, 
and made toward them. Thorvald said then, " We will set up our battle- 
shields, and guard ourselves the best we can, but fight little against 
them." So they did ; and the Skraelings shot at them for a while, but 
then fled each as fast as he could. Then Thorvald asked his men if 
any of them was hurt ; they said they were not hurt. " I have got a 
hurt under the arm," said he; "for an arrow flew between the bulwarks 
and the shield under my arm, and here is the arrow, and that will be 
my death. Now I counsel that ye make ready as quickly as may be to 
return ; but ye shall bear me to the headland which I thought the likeli- 
est place to build. It may be it was a true word I spoke, that I should 
dwell there for a time. There ye shall bury me, and set crosses at my 
head and feet, and call it 'Krossanes' henceforth." Greenland was 
then Christianized, but Eirek the Red had died before Christianity 
came thither. Now Thorvald died ; but they did everything according 
as he had said, and then went and found their companions and told 
each other the news they had to tell, and lived there that winter and 
gathered grapes and vines for loading the ship. Then in the spring 
they made ready to sail for Greenland, and came with their ship to 
Eireksfirth, and had great tidings to tell to Leif. 

In the meanwhile Thorstein, Eirek's third son, had mar- 
ried Gudrid, the widow of the Norwegian Thorir, whom 
Leif had rescued from the rock. When the news of his 
brother's death arrived, Thorstein resolved to go after 
Thorvald's dead body, in order to give it a Christian 
burial. Accordingly he set off ; but after driving about 
the whole summer unsuccessfully, he was obliged to put 



in at the western settlement of Greenland, where they 
remained that winter. Here Thorstein and many of his 
men died of a pestilence, and Gudrid returned to Leif at 
the eastern settlement. This summer a rich Norwegian, 
named Thorfin Kalsefni, came to Greenland and stayed 
at Leif's house, where he fell in love with Gudrid and 
married her. There being still a great talk about Vin- 
land, Thorfin was persuaded to undertake a voyage thither, 
— which he did, taking with him his wife and a company 
of sixty men and five women 1 (a. d. 1007). 

" This agreement made Karlsefni and his seamen, that they should 
have even-handed all that they should get in the way of goods. They 
had with them all sorts of cattle, as they thought to settle there if they 
liked. Karlsefni begged Leif for his house in Vinland ; but he said he 
would lend him the house, but not give it. Then they bore out to sea 
with the ship and came to Leif's booths hale and whole, and landed 
there their cattle. There soon came into their hands a great and good 
prize ; for a whale was driven ashore, both great and good. Then they 
went to cut up the whale, and had no scarcity of food. The cattle went 
up into the country, and it soon happened that the male cattle became 
wild and unruly. They had with them a bull. Karlsefni had wood 
felled and brought to the ship, and had the wood piled on the cliff to 
dry. They had all the good things of the country, both of grapes and 
of all sorts of game and other things. After the first winter came 
the summer ; then they saw appear the Skraelings, and there came from 
out the wood a great number of men. Near by were their neat-cattle ; 
and the. bull took to bellowing [tok at belja], and roared loudly; 
whereat the Skraelings were frightened, and ran off with their bundles. 
These were furs, and sable-skins, and skin-wares of all kinds. And 
they turned towards Karlsefni's booths, and wanted to get into the 
house, but Karlsefni had the doors guarded. Neither party under- 
stood the other's language. Then the Skraelings took down their bags 
and opened them and offered them for sale, and wanted above all 
to have weapons for them. But Karlsefni forbade them to sell weapons. 

1 Beamish and Smith give the total number 160. Vigfusson translates the passage 
"four tens off the second hundred." Icelandic Prose-reader, Notes to Erik's Saga 
Rauda, 1879, p. 381. 



H3 

He took this plan : he bade the women bring out their dairy stuff ! for 
them ; and so soon as they saw this they would have that and nothing 
else. Now this was the way the Skraelings traded, — they bore off their 
wares in their stomachs j but Karlsefni and his companions had their 
bags and skin-wares, and so they parted. Now hereof is this to say, 
that Karlsefni had posts driven strongly round about his booths, and 
made all complete. At this time Gudrid, the wife of Karlsefni, bore a 
man-child, and he was called Snorri. In the beginning of the next 
winter the Skraelings came to them again, and were many more than be- 
fore, and they had the same wares as before. Then Karlsefni said to the 
women, " Now bring forth the same food that was most liked before, 
and no other." And when they saw it they cast their bundles in over 
the fence. . . . (But one of them being killed by one of Karlsefni's 
men, they all fled in haste and left their garments and wares behind.) 
" Now I think we need a good counsel," said Karlsefni, "for I think 
they will come for the third time in anger and with many men. Now 
we must do this : ten men must go out to that ness and show themselves 
there ; but another party must go into the wood and hew a place clear 
for our neat-cattle, when the foe shall come from the wood. And we 
must take the bull and let him go before us." But thus it was with the 
place where they thought to meet, that a lake was on one side and the 
wood on the other. Now it was done as Karlsefni had said. Now 
came the Skraelings to the place where Karlsefni had thought should be 
the battle. And now there was a battle, and many of the Skraelings 
fell. There was one large and handsome man among the Skraelings, 
and Karlsefni thought he might be their leader. Now one of the 
Skraelings had taken up an axe and looked at it awhile, and struck at 
one of his fellows and hit him, — whereupon he fell dead. Then the 
large man took the axe and looked at it awhile and threw it into the 
sea as far as he could. But after that they fled to the wood, each as 
fast as he could ; and thus ended the strife. Karlsefni and his com- 
panions were there all that winter ; but in the spring Karlsefni said he 
would stay there no longer, and would fare to Greenland. Now they 
made ready for the voyage, and bare thence much goods ; namely, 
grape-vines and grapes and skin-wares. Now they sailed into the sea 
and came home with their ship to Eireksfirth, and were there that 
winter. 

1 Bunyt, lacticinia, — anything made of milk. 



H 88 85 '!« 



